


tu fui, ego eris

by vanitaslaughing



Series: darkest before dawn [3]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: ... not that there's anything romantic going on between ardyn and ignis., Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bad Decisions, Choose Your Own Ending, Comrades Spoilers, Dark, Episode Ignis Spoilers, Friends to Enemies, Heroes to Villains, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Not Happy, Oracle Ravus Nox Fleuret, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Royal Edition Spoilers, Screw Destiny, Spirits, Unhealthy Relationships, World of Ruin, bad ending is finished. good ending in progress.
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-03-28 18:49:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 53
Words: 314,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13910043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanitaslaughing/pseuds/vanitaslaughing
Summary: Ignis would doanythingto change the fate he foresaw. Even if it means joining hands with a man he hates. Even if it means betraying those he holds dear. Even if it means tormenting them under the guise of being loyal to the Accursed. He can turn the tide if he just stays close to the man.Night falls.Noctis stays.





	1. Remember...

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE NOTE: this fic was originally written with the bad ending only. the good ending is therefore in progress as of me writing this; where the path diverges i WILL tell you guys and drop you a link to good ending
> 
> but if you're here for the good ending only, it's in-prog

His head felt like it was about to split in half. His vision was swimming as he staggered along the walkway, the ominous glow ahead only intensifying the disorientation as the vision faded from his mind. The fact that there was nothing but empty space below him as he clung to the rails on the walkway for a second trying to regain his balance was not reassuring the slightest, but there was something much more pressing on Ignis Scientia’s mind.

The vision, in particular. Visions, in fact. They had haunted him ever since he had come across the Oracle’s dog Pryna at the Altar of the Tidemother.

Back in Altissia.

Infrequent though they were, they were intrusive and derailed his train of thought whenever he thought he had a moment to think things through. He’d not thought things through since the moment he had been pinned to the ground at the altar, Noctis’ unconscious body he had fought so hard to protect from an enraged Ravus Nox Fleuret after essentially taking back the entire city together mere inches away from him. The way the Ring of the Lucii had glinted on the ground as he glared up at Ardyn, his head throbbing still from the blunt force of the kick. Ardyn had offered him death or coming along and letting them off the hook alive. Or at least Noctis, for now. Though everything about it had screamed ‘trap that will definitely kill you’, Ignis had reluctantly accepted after what felt like minutes of glaring up at the man and trying to ignore the glint of the ring on the ground.

The soldiers hadn’t seen it. Ardyn hadn’t seen it.

Currently the Ring of the Lucii, priceless heirloom and device of Noctis’ own undoing if the visions were to be believed, was burning a hole in his pocket. At least it felt that way with how heavy it was, how painfully aware he was of its presence. The visions had been unforgiving and harsh, and time and time again he felt like he was about to see the ring on Noctis’ hand as he sat pinned to the throne by his father’s sword once more. It only made his headache and nausea worse, and Ignis was far from in a good shape.

How much time had passed between him managing to snatch the ring as the Niff soldiers let go of him and him taking another blunt hit to the temples and him awaking in the middle of Zegnautus Keep? He didn’t know. It could have been hours. It could have been a week for all he knew, and he certainly felt weak enough that it had to have been a while. Definitely dehydration, physical exhaustion, a concussion. That on top of all the burning nicks and scratches and gashes across his body had all but siphoned his energy out of him, and he clung to the rails like a drowning man.

Up ahead the Crystal was glowing ominously. Any other day, he would have been happy to see the gift of the gods that Niflheim had killed King Regis for, but all it did right now was amplify his nausea. The strange light it emitted was similar to what his visions had looked like – Ignis forced himself to stand straight. If he kept moving then it would get better. There was no place else to go, which meant that inevitably Ardyn Izunia would appear before him again to do whatever it was that the man was trying to accomplish with this.

His steps were wobbly and uncertain, the ring in his pockets felt like the weight of the world, and Ignis dragged himself further than his exhausted body would let him. By the time he stood before the Crystal he was no longer certain whether his eyes were playing tricks on him or not, but after a moment of consideration he realised that this was happening.

Darkness was spreading across the room, almost blotting out the electric lights and leaving nothing but the unearthly violet glow that spread alongside the darkness and the light of the Crystal behind him. He turned around to face the very man who had brought him here, a glare on his face. He couldn’t manage anything else. Even just pulling a weapon from the Armiger would likely make him pass out, let alone properly using Elemancy to enhance the blades he normally fought with. Unless he managed to give himself another surge of adrenaline, Ignis was defenceless. Still he tried to look at least somewhat threatening.

It immediately fell flat when the man raised his hat a little, and Ignis let out something between a gasp and a retch. The visions and the intrusive voice that all but told him what would happen inevitably had said that Ardyn was far from a human being any longer. A creature that sought to destroy everything in its path, and the way it had sounded like he was barely in control. But that man who grinned at him like the Daemon he was definitely looked like he was in control. In control and ready to do anything to get what he wanted. Wanted something that had to do with Noctis’ death or survival.

He already knew the answer, but perhaps hearing it out of the horse’s mouth would help his spinning thoughts even out and let him think for once.

“Why are you after Noct? For revenge?”

Ardyn barely missed a beat. The grin faded. “In a sense, yes, but my aims extend beyond the boy.” He turned to look sideways, the black blood suddenly vanishing from his face. He looked like the imperial chancellor they had met too much for it to be a coincidence during their travels, and now Ignis knew why he had always been so uncomfortable with how frequently Ardyn appeared. “He’s more of a means to an end.”

Ignis let out a small growl. Noctis had effectively been the centre of his entire world since the day they had met – hearing him be called nothing but ‘means to an end’ certainly put an end to his wildly incomprehensible thoughts.

“I suppose I never revealed my proper name,” the foreboding in the air was just about as choking as Ignis’ nausea was, but he could not take his eyes off Ardyn for even a second as the man said that, “so allow me to introduce myself: Ardyn Lucis Caelum.”

He had snapped his fingers as he said his name. Spinning around Ardyn was a familiar sight that instilled nothing short of utter terror in Ignis – the Armiger at its full potential. Weapons that looked like they were made of glass but that Ignis knew were stronger than anything else in this world, transparent and fragile but with so much energy behind it that Lucians kings and queens normally did not summon it just to show off. It was as it appeared around Noctis every time he gained another of these weapons, and Ignis recognised most of these.

Just that their hue was reddish instead of the crystal-clear blue that King Regis’ and Noctis’ Armiger manifested as. It was deeply unsettling, but hearing the name made a thought crystallise itself through the vortex in his mind.

“The Founder King?”

Ignis knew that was not the case, but perhaps he could buy himself some time – Ardyn was going to attack him anyway. The weapons were a clear indication of that.

“If only.” For but a split second it sounded like Ardyn actually lamented the fact. “No, that would be my _dear brother_ who snatched the throne and cast me into exile.”

Time slowed down to a crawl, and Ignis only heard his own heart rapidly beating. That unsettling smile. Those visions. The ring in his pockets. He knew enough about the Ring of the Lucii to know that his life was forfeit the second he put it on. He had applied enough practical knowledge in the field by now to understand fully when an opponent was about to pounce, and that movement Ardyn made was absolutely him signalling that whatever happened next, Ignis would likely get impaled on one of these brilliantly shining weapons unless he managed to calculate their trajectory precisely and either block them or move out of the way. His body was not in the condition to do that, however. He was exhausted. He wanted to go back to Lucis, to lie on a blanket in one of the roof gardens that belonged to the crown with Noctis lying next to him, dozing in the afternoon sun.

In that slowdown moment he recalled that he would do anything for Noctis. Putting on the Ring of the Lucii and beg their favour. Beat down Ardyn and _die_ for it, as long as it meant that Noctis was safe. But the prophecy… the prophecy remained. He had seen its conclusion. Noctis pinned against the throne. The soft light of dawn falling through a massive hole in the roof of the throne room. Blood, blood, blood. If he did as the gods wanted him to – put on the ring, beat Ardyn down, fight him to the death, buy Noctis more time to get here and find the Draconian and the Ring of the Lucii, let him get that power – then Noctis would die. He would likely die too.

He needed a moment to throw Ardyn off his tracks. Needed a _second_ to think this through properly.

“I’ve never been called ‘Your Majesty’ before.” There was nothing but sweet malice in those words and eyes. “Would you do me the honour?”

A moment to throw Ardyn off his tracks. Though every single cell, every _atom_ in his body rebelled against it, Ignis blinked and slowly dropped to one knee. He was exhausted. The world was spinning. He needed to think this through properly. He could buy himself more time by distracting the man.

“Of course, _Your Majesty.”_

He wasn’t looking at Ardyn, but he heard the telltale sound of Armiger weapons being dismissed. The sound of glass breaking, sharp and loud, echoed through the strange room that the Crystal was being kept in. It was behind Ignis, uncontrollable without royal blood and the Ring of the Lucii. He did not have royal blood, but he did have the Ring of the Lucii. As long as he kept it from Noctis’ hands, the Draconian would be unable to do anything to Noctis. No Reflection. No sleep for a decade knowing that the second he awoke he would have to march to his own death. Ignis knew for a fact that Noctis would do it with dignity – he always did in the end. Resignation, perhaps. Old traumas flaring anew. But he always wound up doing what people and the gods told him to.

He couldn’t blindly follow without the ring.

Ignis was going to keep that far, far away from him.

“Hmm.” There was something slightly uneven about Ardyn’s footsteps – a limp, perhaps – but Ignis did not look up. “How peculiarly unexpected.”

The steps stopped, and but a heartbeat later Ardyn had crouched down in front of Ignis and put a hand under the advisor’s chin. Ignis knew that the man was going to force him to look up like that; he did that but a split second later. He almost bit his tongue as he stared into Ardyn’s eyes with what must have looked like a vacant expression.

“Very well then. I am fairly certain you remember the question I asked you at the Altar of the Tidemother back in Altissia all too clearly, but it bears repeating right now. You’re exhausted, upset, disoriented, at the ends of your strength; I can see that much. So let me offer you again: I kill you right here, end that suffering caused by _whatever_ has beset you since you started climbing Zegnautus Keep and bury you with the Crystal – or you come with me.”

Both choices were suicide, just as they had been back in Altissia. Ignis’ mouth was dry; back then he had only thought about buying Noctis more time, especially after the disjointed vision that he had seen after coming across the dying Pryna. Fighting Ravus had left him exhausted and unable to fight back, the fact that Ardyn had used an illusion to get as close to them as possible notwithstanding. Ignis closed his eyes and for a split moment he saw the glinting steel of the dagger in Ardyn’s hands before his eyes again, so dangerously close to Noctis’ neck that it made his heart skip beats just by thinking about it.

The gods needed Ardyn and Noctis for the prophecy – the Crystal and the Ring of the Lucii. If he had enough time, Ignis could either figure out how to get rid of Ardyn without sacrificing Noctis.

Or he could lend a helping hand once it came to the inevitable battle, a person who would drive the dagger into their superior’s back. Just as Ardyn had done with the entire ruling council of Niflheim after Emperor Aldercapt had turned it into a military dictatorship. With those men gone, the empire was on the verge of collapse.

Surely the same could be applied to the host of the Starscourge that Noctis had been prophesied to wipe out. Without the brain surely the malevolent infection would weaken enough that a sacrifice was no longer needed.

His voice was but a whisper. It hurt him to his very core to say these words, knowing exactly what everyone else would think. He knew full well he would have to play his role perfectly or Ardyn would catch on immediately.

“Take me with you, Your Majesty.”


	2. leaden hearts in crystalline halls

He awoke in a bed with a start. Everything following that was a blur, but soon enough once Gladio and Prompto stopped fussing over him and their words became clearer, just as Noctis realised something.

Ignis was suspiciously absent.

He asked about that as soon once his friends stopped their fussing, but he did not get an answer. That scared look that Prompto shot Gladio was more than enough answer, and for a long moment Noctis felt like they were about to tell him that Ignis had died. Drowned. Been torn to pieces.

No such thing happened.

“I’m quite afraid there have been… complications.” The last person Noctis would have ever expected to walk into the room was Ravus Nox Fleuret, strangely leaning onto one of his sides. “Your advisor was taken to Niflheim. Whether as hostage or as something more sinister I cannot quite tell. Unfortunately I missed whatever Ardyn said.”

Time moved too quickly for Noctis to keep up. Barely out of bed they all boarded an airship that had miraculously made it out of the chaos that had ensued after Titan had come to their aid. He barely had the chance to mourn Luna’s passing – for a split second he thought that he saw Ravus wipe something off his face as he flew the airship back to Niflheim. There were many things that Noctis wanted to say to the man, many things that he wanted to ask.

His voice was but a croak as he sat there leaning against Gladio. “Ravus.”

“Mhm.”

“Why are you… helping us? Helping _me?”_

A long moment of silence. Noctis heard Prompto hold his breath, while Gladio almost protectively put an arm around Noctis’ shoulders. The man flying the airship remained quiet for a good while.

“Don’t be asinine. I owe you no allegiance, especially not after… Lunafreya’s passing.”

“Then why…?”

“For the time being, we both share a similar goal. There is strength in numbers and it would be foolish to not offer a temporary truce and transportation when our final destination is the same.”

Noctis closed his eyes, unable to truly parse what the man had said. His thoughts were a mess, muddled by grief and panic. He had lost Luna – he could not bear losing Ignis as well.

It was Gladio who spoke next. “Wait. Similar goal, same destination?”

“Ignis Scientia. I… owe him something, you could say. Alas, it was my inability to do anything about Ardyn that left him in that situation, and I passed out before he was whisked away.”

There was something that Ravus was not telling them, but Noctis did not inquire further. He just buried his face into Gladio’s jacket and let Prompto fuss over him. He was so very, very tired; he didn’t feel rested at all. A familiar pain was flaring up on his back an hour later and he let out a small whimper.

Gladio understood what it meant. Not as well as Ignis did, but barely anyone knew Noctis as well as his advisor. They had been together for so long it felt like he was missing a limb now, just as Prompto going missing would have left a sore spot. Just as Gladio leaving for the Blademaster’s trials had left a phantom pain. The four of them had been through so much together in the last months that it felt wrong to not be four and stay four.

“Hey, you alright? How bad is it?”

Ignis had suggested that Noctis could tell people how bad the injury was acting up in numbers instead of describing it in detail. This system had reduced the horrible flashbacks the young prince had had almost drastically, and thankfully enough most people understood it once Ignis explained it. Even Gladio and Prompto had learned that system.

The pain was numbing but not as numb as his mind was. Truth be told Noctis was fairly certain that this was just a stress reaction.

“Six.” Six meant that it was likely related to stress and would subside once he calmed down or they found a way to eliminate the stress. Gladio did not ask how they could lessen the strain – the answer was obvious. Ignis’ safe return would reduce the sheer amount of pain Noctis was in now.

“How much longer?” Prompto asked, fidgeting where he sat. The insides of a Niff airship was nothing new to the three Lucians, but it still remained unsettling. “Where would Ardyn even have taken Ignis?”

A sigh from the pilot. “There’s not many places. Knowing the man – Zegnautus Keep.”

The heart of the empire. How ironically fitting. Noctis wheezed into Gladio’s jacket as his Shield and friend started asking about how they would proceed once they were in Gralea.

* * *

The hallways were desolate and empty. The central elevator’s control panel had been irreparably damaged, Ravus had said. Noctis had not looked at the sparking console – his gaze was fixed on the room just before this one, a storage room. There were clear slashes accompanied by burns across the floor and some of the things scattered there. Before they had gone to Altissia, Ignis had mentioned that the Kingsglaive’s skill of calling upon magic without it having been fed into magic bottles intrigued him. In the short span of a week he had made a theory out of its application in combat and all but perfected it. Ignis was that kind of person, after all. Very intelligent and outstanding in everything he put his mind into. Even his father had commented on the fact that this generation’s Scientia was unusually sharp for his age, usually in tandem with Ignis having managed to outsmart security and getting Noctis out of the Citadel without anyone noticing whenever the prince asked him to.

Those slashes and burns all but confirmed that Ignis was alive and had been fighting. Which meant that he could still be alive somewhere, likely still fighting.

Ravus kicked the broken control panel.

“There’s no way into the upper reaches of this place without the elevator, I’m afraid. Every other route we could take would lead us either into a dead end or into resting quarters of highly trained soldiers and officials.”

Zegnautus Keep lay eerily silent – not even MTs patrolled the hallways they had jogged through earlier. Somehow Noctis doubted that there would be any soldiers left at this point, especially since Ignis technically was an intruder as well and had gone through here before them, but it was essential to play it safe.

“The only way further up would be through the throne room.”

“Absolutely out of the question,” Gladio immediately interjected, his arms crossed. “We don’t know who’s left at this point, getting into a fight with the emperor and his elite guard that stays around him is the _last_ thing we want to do.”

“You think I don’t know that, Amicitia!?”

“What I’m thinking is, there’s gotta be a way to make this damn thing work again!”

Ravus was a second away from lunging at Gladio. It was Prompto who moved between the two before Gladio could, a desperate smile on his face. The blonde was just about as worried and unhappy about this as the others were, but Noctis once more had to admit that he was very, very glad that he had befriended him. Prompto’s skill with other humans was often lacking, but when it came down to it, he was an excellent mood-maker and good at reading the situation to figure out a solution.

“Hold on, you two. You said the thing was irreparably broken, right, High Commander? May I take a look at it? I may not be one of Niflheim’s master engineers, or even half as good as Cindy and Cid, but I can try at least.”

Ravus stepped away from it, finally breaking eye contact with Gladio and turning his back to the group.

Noctis simply stayed behind Gladio – it was a familiar action, one that his Shield let happen without too much of a fuss. He always used people to hide behind when he was anxious – his father first and foremost when he had been younger, sometimes Cor or Clarus, Gladio now that they were older and got along. For the most part of his life, he had hidden behind Ignis.

For what felt both like eternity and the fastest hour in his life, Prompto attempted to reconnect snapped wires and broken circuits.

At some point Ravus walked over to Prompto and looked at what the blonde was doing, and Noctis definitely heard him compliment Prompto on his skills with technology. For someone who had grown up around the empire this had to look like mindless tinkering, no matter how talented the Lucian was and how much he had learned from Cindy before they left for Altissia. Still, other than the dull throb across his back, nothing happened.

That was what made Gladio extremely suspicious.

“There’s a darn warehouse behind us. Where the hell is everyone?”

Noctis, who was sitting on the floor by then with his legs crossed, shrugged with a long sigh. “Would you rather we have to fight our way through?”

Gladio grunted. “You do know that this implies several things.”

He didn’t say anything else, but Noctis knew, of course. There were several possibilities of what had happened here. One, they were all gone for some reason – the reason could be trying to catch an intruder that they had not come across yet, likely Ignis. They could have been wiped out by something or someone. The strange energy in this place and what they had heard from Aranea back in Steyliff remained a fact that did not leave Noctis’ mind for long. The empire caught Daemons. Bred them. Changed them. Whatever else they did with them. If those specimen got out and went wild…

“Ah-ha! Got it!”

* * *

The elevator was surprisingly cramped with the four of them in there. Noctis still made certain that Gladio stood between him and Ravus, even though Prompto had apparently warmed up to the man by now. It was a force of habit, really, and Gladio had immediately moved between them anyway – Noctis was not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

It was only once the elevator had started that Ravus flinched slightly.

He looked like he had just remembered something that he had forgotten for a while and moved to fiddle around with the two swords attached to his hip. Noctis hadn’t really paid attention to these, but the difference between those two was more visible than he would have ever thought they were. One was clearly a Niff forge, slim and elegant and bestowed upon the highest standing officers in the army.

The other one…

Ravus removed it and looked at it for a second. He then offered the hilt to Noctis.

That was exactly the moment he remembered why that sword looked for familiar. It was his father’s.

Gladio recognised it too and he inhaled sharply, whereas Noctis slowly came out from his hiding space. He was still so very tired that his every movement was sluggish, but the second he touched the hilt it burst into crystalline glass and Ravus let go of it.

The three others stepped back as far as they could until they were with their backs to the other side of the elevator and all four of them watched the sword trace an arc through the air as far as it could. The sting of it entering his Armiger was long familiar and so was the feeling of all other royal arms bursting back into existence as they twirled around him. Twelve weapons vanished as Noctis dismissed them – the thirteenth, the Trident of the Oracle, had not been found after Luna’s death.

Noctis only nodded at Ravus; Ravus nodded back. There wasn’t anything to be said about this, but Noctis understood what the gesture meant. Acceptance, no matter how begrudging. Whatever had happened between Ravus and Ignis had made the High Commander at least somewhat respect Noctis. Enough that he returned his late father’s sword to him; and Ravus hated Regis, hated Noctis. This gesture was almost more than he could bear, but before anyone could say anything awkward, the elevator stopped and its doors slid open.

They gave way to the highest point in Zegnautus Keep, a room that Ravus had described as the place where Emperor Aldercapt had kept the Crystal they had stolen from Lucis under lock. He could feel it nearly immediately, the familiar thrum of magic that had ever followed his father around. Noctis stepped out of the elevator followed by the other three and took a look around quickly. There was just a walkway up ahead, and the familiar magic emanated from up ahead. At some point the walls vanished and led into a large room, with only the walkway keeping them from plummeting to the floor of whatever this room was.

The two silhouettes stood stark against the light of the Crystal; one standing straight and the other leaning forwards. Without even thinking about it much, Noctis pulled his trusty blade out of the Armiger and broke into a sprint – the one leaning over had to be Ignis, since the standing one was clearly Ardyn.

“Ignis!”

Behind him, Ravus, Prompto and Gladio also broke into a jog; he heard the click of Prompto’s gun and the sound of Gladio drawing his sword. Only Ravus did not do anything of the sort, but Noctis was not going to look at what the man was doing. Likely glaring.

Ardyn turned his head slowly as Noctis skidded to a halt. Almost too nonchalantly. After what had happened in Altissia Noctis was worried he would find another knife in the guts of a person he loved, but Ignis seemed to lack any mortal wounds or deep-cutting injuries aside from the fact that he had lost his glasses somewhere along the way. There were bruises all over his advisor’s face, bloody scrapes and torn cloth. He was a downright mess, but he looked at Noctis out of the corners of his eyes. He was alive. He was still alive.

“Speak of the devil and he shall appear,” Ardyn said with a dramatic sigh, “but since we were at that topic to begin with… How about we skip past the pleasantries and you show me your convictions?”

Ignis stood up straight.

It was only that moment that Noctis realised that there were no weapons scattered around. Ignis had not been disarmed – had apparently not put up a fight to begin with. Ignis normally fought back the hardest when cornered, some sort of crack in his facade that only showed when something was truly at stake. Right now however he almost looked relaxed.

_Ignis definitely should not be looking relaxed._ Especially not after the cryptic mess that Ardyn had dropped.

“Very well.”

So many times Ignis had been his sparring partner. So many times they had watched each other’s training sessions. Noctis and Ignis knew one another’s movements and battle strategies by heart – Gladio did, too, to a degree. Noctis had fallen asleep in Ignis’ arms so many times that he had lost count. He knew exactly what movement that was, but he could not move. He could only stare as Ignis, bruised and beaten but still standing straight and tall, reached for Noctis. Grabbed his arms. Twisted them to nearly their breaking point and turned him around so he was facing Gladio, Prompto and Ravus instead of Ardyn and Ignis. He heard a sound he had heard a million times over and over, in the field of battle. In his own kitchen. Ignis often called upon his knives when bored. He would toss them with an accuracy that only Prompto’s shooting skills outdid.

Cold steel against his throat. Gladio was staring kind of dumbfounded. Prompto had ducked behind Ravus. Ravus himself stood there unmoving like a cliff by the sea.

“Step back, all of you.” Ignis was so close to him that it hurt more than the fact that he was nearly breaking his arms.

“The… the hell… Iggy...” Gladio’s voice was breaking. Prompto behind Ravus was quivering.

“I said, step back.”

Ravus finally broke out of his trance. He gestured vaguely at Prompto and then started walking backwards.

Ignis was using Noctis as living shield, he realised with a jolt of terror. A living shield that would buy him and the imperial chancellor a way out of this room. Gladio must have realised this as well, considering how he curled his free hand into a fist.

“Drop the weapon, Gladio,” Ignis said so smoothly that it sounded as if he had just reprimanded Prompto for joking about his cooking skills, “drop the weapon and step back. Otherwise your duty as Shield of the King will come to an unfortunate end due to a lack of royalty.”

Noctis blinked. “Do what he says, Gladio.”

He had imagined many things in his life. He had always been taught to expect a kidnapping, or being held hostage. Ignis had often overseen those kinds of training sessions, called them off when Noctis got too stressed. Treated him something that the advisor knew he liked after a session gone badly. To have Ignis be the person who was now using Noctis as a living shield felt too surreal to be truly happening. But the pain told him it was true, his arms completely out of commission and his back searing with pain. Ignis slowly moved him forwards, until a point where the other three stood against the walls once they were close to the elevator again. Ardyn said nothing the entire time, but Noctis could not see the man at all. Once they passed the other three, Ignis started dragging him backwards – and finally he saw the man as he went on ahead to the elevator.

There was just the slightest hint of a grin on the man’s otherwise unmoving features, and Noctis held his breath for a second.

Once they reached the elevator, Ardyn started clapping.

“Marvellous. Truly marvellous.”

For a long moment he thought that Ignis was going to pull him into the elevator.

Then he slowly removed the knife.

And rammed the handle against Noctis’ head. A swift, precise movement meant to take him out instead of seriously injuring him. The world went black before he even hit the ground.

* * *

He woke again in an airship.

At first the world was fuzzy and wobbly, turning and revolting against him. Noctis tried to sit up, moved too quickly. He barely managed to keep himself together as waves of nausea hit him, and something familiar skidded into his view.

“Noct, buddy, take it slow! You feelin’ alright? Anything funky? Sick? Disoriented? Do you need some water?”

What he needed was a moment of peace and quiet to focus on his surroundings, but no words escaped him. He could barely sit straight, let alone make any sounds other than a pathetic hiccup-sounding croak. Perhaps Prompto thought he was about to start crying, so he thankfully backed off.

The world was slowly but steadily turning back into something comprehensible. The fuzzy edges and mixed colours soon enough turned into the dull grey of an airship – but there was strange light reflected off it. He turned his head slowly and looked to the side.

The Crystal was on this airship, sitting quietly and almost solemnly.

And completely uncontrollable.

The Ring of the Lucii, as Prompto whispered once he saw where Noctis was looking, was still gone after all. They had not found it anywhere in Zegnautus Keep. They had, in fact, not found anything or anyone in Zegnautus Keep after Ardyn and Ignis had vanished.

Ardyn and Ignis.

His head was throbbing and he put a hand on where Ignis had hit him with a groan. Not fatal, just something to knock him out. It hurt like hell itself. Prompto was clearly uncertain what to do.

“Gladio…?”

“In the cockpit with Ravus. High Commander said he needed someone to contact any other airships around. Last thing I heard, none of them responded except for one subdivision… You won’t believe it but, the subdivision that answered? Under the command of Commodore Aranea Highwind herself.”

Prompto went on to summarise what they had learned. How the days all but had gotten shorter in the few days it had been since Lunafreya’s death in Altissia. How darkness threatened to embrace Eos for all eternity, how the general populace was starting to panic. Insomnia was still under imperial lockdown – not because of the soldiers that were stationed there, Prompto said in a hushed whisper. MTs patrolled the borders of the crown city now, and at night those MTs were replaced with Daemons. They had contacted Aranea and Ravus had all but bought her services with what was left of his family’s fortune – according to Prompto the High Commander had said that they would need to fortify against the darkness somewhere in the world.

“Glad to hear you can actually retain information for that long.”

Noctis turned his head slowly. Ravus’ blindingly white clothes made a sting of pain shoot through his head and he groaned.

“Why’s the… pilot… here…”

“Autopilot,” Ravus said as he crouched down next to Noctis. “Quite convenient when necessary.”

He simply nodded at the man who would have become his brother-in-law if Niflheim had ever had the intention of keeping the peace they offered. The world was still spinning slightly and Noctis felt the dread settle in the pit of his stomach. It was Ignis who was supposed to be doing what Prompto had nervously been doing. It was Ignis who should be crouching next to him.

He let out another groan when Ravus said it was important that Noctis rounded up what remained of the Crownsguard and the Kingsglaive and deploy them for immediate action. They would have to get in contact with what was left of Niflheim, the citizenry of Tenebrae – which Ravus would be doing – and the government of Accordo as soon as possible. Whatever Ardyn was up to, it was definitely something far more sinister than they could ever imagine, especially since Ravus noted that the Accursed was still conspicuously missing from the centre stage.

Ardyn had to be that Accursed, and Ignis was with him.

Ignis…

Noctis leaned against Prompto while Ravus got up with a deep frown on his face.

This had to be a joke. This had to be a joke, Noctis started repeating to himself like a mad mantra as the airship made a beeline for Lestallum back in Lucis.


	3. BLISTER

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's just two things i really have to say so far, here's the first:
> 
> take a look at the chapter names. now that all three main characters have gotten their turn you can see how i'll note whose turn it is; Second person with proper punctuation will be Ignis' turn; lowercase with no punctuation will be noctis; ardyn gets single word ALL-CAPS chapters.

He had to admit, at first he had only been humouring himself first and foremost. Watching those two fight each other to the death was amusing as it was – Ravus Nox Fleuret’s impulsive hatred was something that was hard to control to begin with, but it made for an interesting toy. Ignis Scientia on the other hand acted almost entirely predictable, which only made sense given that he had grown up around Noctis and was almost hopelessly in love with the royal who would never be his.

Really, Ardyn only decided to walk into the scene disguised as Gladiolus because this was getting them nowhere. Ignis was too exhausted to truly move, having used up most of his energy to deflect Ravus’ desperate suicide attack. Ardyn had to call it what it was – a suicide attack. Even if they had only truly worked with one another for a few hours at best, the two of them had gotten to understand the fundamental desires that drove them into the same direction. Ravus fully understood that even if Ignis was exhausted and beaten, he would rear up and unleash strength that few could call upon even in desperation, all to protect Noctis. And Noctis was alive. Lunafreya wasn’t. But Ignis did not kill him, which obviously threw Ravus off his chosen path and allowed the grief to truly hit him.

All in all, a stalemate that was best diffused as soon as possible; not that he put much of an effort into keeping himself hidden.

Gladiolus Amicitia at least would have had reason to attack Ravus, but the High Commander was having nothing of that. Having been around the man enough, he immediately saw through the disguise. That snarl was music to his ears as he waved in the soldiers that had been hidden around – not that they were truly human at their base. Half Daemon, and therefore unable to respond to the High Commanders call for a retreat. Still, he had to admit there was something strange about the sheer defiance Ignis was portraying even now, pinned to the ground.

Knocking him and Ravus out was really not that big of a deal, but the quick recovery was impressive. That advisor barely looked like he could take a hit and relied on strategies first and foremost – most Niff commanders generally would have underestimated the man. Caligo Ulldor had paid the price for that arrogance even if it had been Ravus who had delivered the final blow to him.

Even Ravus’ recovery impressed Ardyn, though nowhere near as much as the struggling advisor did. There was no way he would be able to get up without having his arms broken, but still he struggled against the grip ever so slightly. The closer Ardyn got to Noctis, the more sheer fury blazed in the young man’s eyes. That sweet moment of utter fear that shot through him as he struggled once more, not knowing whether Ardyn was truly going to ram his knife into the Chosen’s unconscious body. That blood-curling scream might have stopped someone who had spent less time on this forsaken planet, but before Ardyn could really do anything, a sword missed his head by centimetres and pinned his hat to the ground.

Ravus’ defiance even though his strongest asset – the prosthetic arm – had been taken out of commission by Ignis.

Perhaps it would be wise to finally show his true colours.

That momentary flash of panic in Ravus’ eyes as he realised what exactly Ardyn was a split second before he was knocked backwards by ancient magic long corrupted was one of the top ten funniest things that Ardyn had seen in the last twenty years or so. Perhaps even fifty years, if he was being generous.

The main attraction was Ignis Scientia, however. Ardyn had spent enough time watching this group to be able to predict their choices. Only Ignis was the one person where even just the slightest possibility for error remained, a wildcard in the deck that the gods had played. Then again, considering the blistering hatred in the young man’s eyes as Ardyn made his offer… Perhaps he hadn’t been sent by any gods at all. Perhaps he had accidentally been put in the deck and now nobody truly knew what to do with him. Ardyn certainly couldn’t parse him with the same accuracy that he had been able to parse Lunafreya, Noctis, even King Regis and his retinue with.

By all means, Ignis should have refused. Shaken off the soldiers pinning him to the ground and launched a suicide attack on Ardyn just as Ravus had launched one on Ignis earlier. It would be counterproductive to kill Ignis right here, all things considered, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t have a little fun with him. Mortals were so easily mangled; even his own flesh often suffered from that two thousand years later.

He mostly offered Ignis to come along for fun. To see that disgust on the advisor’s face – the same disgust that people two thousand years had displayed when they shunned him, when his own brother had cast him into exile.

Ardyn almost missed the choked answer. He’d expected Ignis to get up screaming, hurling his body against the Accursed in a desperate attempt to buy more time for the unconscious Chosen to wake and help defend himself.

“Then… take me with you,” Ignis wheezed into the ground, his eyes closed and his glasses cracked. Ardyn raised an eyebrow and signalled the soldiers to use less force for a second.

“Oh?”

“You h-heard me.”

He had indeed.

Perhaps his predictions had been wrong for once. This was going to be fun, Ardyn mused as the soldiers let go of Ignis and the advisor dragged himself forwards a bit. Ardyn stepped over the unconscious Chosen’s body and held eye contact with Ignis for a few seconds before one of the soldiers, at his signal, rammed their weapon into the advisor’s head to take him out.

* * *

The symptoms of what was ailing Ignis Scientia were clear, displaying very rapidly, and there was just about nothing that a trained doctor or healer could do. Ardyn often took enjoyment in watching a heart break into a billion pieces, but something about this situation left him with a bitter taste in his mouth for once. The other symptoms showed that Ignis was not reaching conclusions by himself – he had Astral help. Whether it was a Messenger who had attached itself to him to tell him truths long forgotten by history or one of the very gods that had caused this situation to begin with, Ardyn didn’t know. Knowing the Astrals and their Messengers, it was likely indistinguishable to begin with.

It made reaching a conclusion to the question what Ignis Scientia would do rather easy, however. He was turning into the cornered animal type, desperately trying to choke back tears as the flames danced over his weapons as they missed the Daemons that Ardyn had specifically dispatched to mess with the advisor. Ardyn almost casually showed him the way, not surprised by the fact that Ignis was not attacking right away. He had a plan, after all. That advisor was an excellent bait – radars had already picked up Ravus’ airship that had not returned from Altissia en route to Gralea. Though begrudging at best, Ravus would deliver Noctis to the heart of the empire.

After all, Noctis could not bear to lose another person after losing Lunafreya. Losing one out of two people one loved was one thing, but losing both of them in an extremely short timespan was another.

He was absolutely certain what Ignis would choose. It was so easy to coax people into reacting just the way they had to, and though Ignis was on his last energy reserves by now he would fight back. Lash out. Struggle long enough to make it satisfying, struggle long enough before his flesh completely failed him and he would collapse from exhaustion alone. The Oracle needed to die, but the advisor could be kicked around time and time again. If he died in the progress of that, then that was that.

The Crystal’s glow was as infuriating as it ever was.

Ardyn shot Ignis a grin once he turned around to look at the chancellor.

“Why are you after Noct? For revenge?”

Ah, how Ardyn hated the redundant questions. It was so very obvious that Ignis was bargaining for more time, apparently trying to think of a way to escape this situation. “In a sense, yes, but my aims extend beyond the boy. He’s more of a means to an end.”

Perhaps he ought to humour Ignis’ attempt at buying more time. Give him a second to seek a way out, or find a weak spot. Alas, Ardyn knew how to instantaneously crush any sort of hope Ignis had in overpowering him, and revealing that right now would add an additional layer of awful dread to the situation for the advisor.

“I suppose I never revealed my proper name, so allow me to introduce myself: Ardyn Lucis Caelum.”

Summoning forth his Armiger was something he rarely ever did. He barely even warped, especially compared to Noctis. But the weapons alone were so familiar that he could almost hear how Ignis’ heart skipped several beats once the shining weapons burst into reality and he slowly said the name that he had not used in centuries.

“The Founder King?”

He could almost _see_ his brother’s infuriating mug. The way he smiled even though he had likely already decided on betraying his older brother’s trust. The man people called Founder King, the man they had raised monuments for. The man whose resting place Ardyn would have loved to tear apart brick by pristinely white brick until nothing but dust remained of it. “If only. No, that would be my _dear brother_ who snatched the throne and cast me into exile.”

There definitely were gears shifting in Ignis’ head. He was trying to make sense of the situation, was trying to calculate something. The only thing that the advisor could likely say with absolute certainty was the fact that Ardyn had long decided to attack him. Ardyn knew for a fact that his next words would be met with a defiant declaration of loyalty to the only true king, the beloved Chosen. Ardyn had the scene play out perfectly in front of him, and he leaned forwards slightly with a grin.

“I’ve never been called ‘Your Majesty’ before. Would you do me the honour?”

He’d expected to be immediately interrupted before he even finished the sentence. Ignis looked stumped for a split second – unusual.

Then he did the one thing that Ardyn would have never guessed. He had watched the advisor and learned that while he might have been a wildcard, there was one particularly glaring character flaw – or perhaps strength – that Ignis had: unwavering loyalty to Noctis. Having grown up around him meant that Ignis knew everything about him, and would do just about anything to keep him safe.

Ignis would never bend his knee to another man.

Yet here he was, doing precisely that.

“Of course, _Your Majesty.”_

He was not entirely certain how to react to that. What he eventually settled for was walking over to Ignis. “Hmm. How peculiarly unexpected.”

He was underselling it, really. Even as he crouched down and forced Ignis to look up at him, Ardyn was not quite sure what to make of this situation. He had completely broken any and all expectations with those four words and a simple movement, even though Ardyn had made a point in trying to learn everyone’s motivations properly. He’d spent hours upon hours analysing every single person in this stage play that inevitably led to Noctis emerging as the true Chosen ready to bring back the light, perhaps finally with enough hatred in his veins to truly fight Ardyn properly. Ignis was supposed to be the one whose undying loyalty brought him to an early grave; either through his own actions when cornered or from utter heartbreak once the sun rose again.

There was some sort of unreadable emotion burning in the young man’s eyes, something that Ardyn had not seen in two thousand years of living. It was like the blister of fire magic but it lacked the normal look of utter contempt and hatred. It wasn’t determination either.

He started to understand in that moment that Ignis was playing a completely different game – one akin to the one Ardyn had played before revealing part of himself and his motives in Altissia. Even now his arm burned when he thought back to the Oracle attempting to heal him even though he had just driven a knife into her guts.

Ignis was going to play a game of deceit, which would have been intimidating since the man was sharply intelligent. Just too good Ardyn was an expert at playing this kind of game through experience.

“Very well then. I am fairly certain you remember the question I asked you at the Altar of the Tidemother back in Altissia all too clearly, but it bears repeating right now. You’re exhausted, upset, disoriented, at the ends of your strength; I can see that much. So let me offer you again: I kill you right here, end that suffering caused by _whatever_ has beset you since you started climbing Zegnautus Keep and bury you with the Crystal – or you come with me.”

There was a moment of hesitation. A flicker of doubt that crossed Ignis’ face. Still he managed to breathe out his answer without sounding uncertain about it. “Take me with you, Your Majesty.”

Ardyn only grinned as he stood back up and threw a glance at the Crystal. “So you are disappointed after all?”

Ignis remained on the ground, holding his bow. He’d been raised around royalty and knew the protocols – it was rather hilarious a sight to behold, because even as Chancellor Izunia barely anyone deemed it necessary to pay the oddball any respect. The only one who had had been Besithia – Ardyn would have to dispose of the man sooner rather than later, because he had gone a little too far in influencing him.

“Stand up and speak for yourself; royalty though I may be, protocol is far from necessary. Answer when you’re asked a question.”

Ignis hesitated for a moment before getting back up – he still held his head bowed. “As you wish. You could say that I am… disappointed, yes. The Crystal… one cannot control it without the Ring of the Lucii, yes?”

“It remains but a fancy rock to all but the one who wears the ring, the one of royal blood. There have been instances of the Lucii permitting someone to use its powers, but the true power of the Crystal is reserved to those of the Lucis Caelum line alone. Without the ring even a king could not bend it to his will.”

Ignis nodded slowly.

“Noct… is. Noctis does not have the ring. Lady Lunafreya did not have it, either.”

Lost at sea then, perhaps. It mattered not – Noctis would need it sooner or later, and the ring would return to him in his hour of need.

Then footsteps. Someone called Ignis’ name.

“Speak of the devil and he shall appear, but since we were at that topic to begin with…” There was not even a cringe, not a flinch. Ignis was an excellent actor. “How about we skip past the pleasantries and you show me your convictions?”

“Very well.”

It took Ardyn a good amount of self-restraint to not burst into howling laughter at how ridiculous this entire situation was. There was Ignis Scientia, the boy who had tailed Noctis since they were children, who had taken care of the Chosen when no one else knew how to handle him. Who had learned how to cook, how to bake, just to recreate something that the prince had tasted in Tenebrae. Loyal to the bone, loyal to a fault. There was Noctis Lucis Caelum, his darling brother’s distant descendant. Who trusted his friends more than he trusted himself, who had been through a lot for a mortal born as sacrificial lamb but had not faced enough hardship to truly hate the Accursed quite yet. And the retainer was dragging the prince backwards, a knife at his best friend’s throat – a living shield that he used to make certain he and Ardyn would walk to the elevator unchallenged. The looks on everyone’s faces was priceless, most of all the confused horror mirrored in Noctis’ eyes.

“Marvellous. Truly marvellous.” He even went as far as clapping ironically, which seemed to rile people up more than he intended to.

If Ignis was acting this out, then Ardyn had to admit that the boy could easily outdo him in a sheer acting contest. He even went as far as to knock Noctis out so neither Gladiolus, Ravus or Prompto could charge into the elevator right away.

Perhaps he wasn’t acting this out at all. He definitely had all chances in the world to drive a dagger between the Accursed’s shoulder blades as they strolled through the desolate Zegnautus Keep, the Daemons that had been its previous population following at a safe distance.

Well, Ardyn decided to take the gamble.

* * *

The halls of the research facility lacked the usually patrolling MTs. Something was definitely off here, but Ardyn already knew what was going on. If left unchecked, this situation could easily spiral out of control and lead to trouble down the line – trouble that he could not exactly use. He needed humanity to remain alive to suffer the horrors of darkness eternal. He needed to fan the flames of despair as well as the undying flames of hope at the same time if the Chosen should really rise against the Accursed one day. And Ardyn was tired. Very tired.

Still, Besithia was a danger to this plan. One step too far – the Immortalis project endangered the survival of humanity, even if Ardyn could not care less about the well-being of the gods.

Ignis followed him like a shadow, silently and without falling over despite the sheer exhaustion he was all but oozing at this point. He had been beaten, pushed around, kicked and belittled and still had emerged victorious from all fights he had picked. Just a few minutes ago he had asked for a short pause.

All Ignis had done had been removing his possessions from the Armiger. Little notebooks, finely polished weapons. He had scattered all of these on the ground, even gone as far as handing over the notebooks when Ardyn asked to see one of these. A lovingly taped together notebook of recipes for dishes, with little additions about who liked what, who needed a variation of it because they were allergic to something (Prompto Argentum, much like his creator, was lactose intolerant; Noctis simply did not like vegetables in any shape, way, or form).

He left it on the floor in a facility that he would never return to as far as he knew. Again, if Ignis was truly acting this out, it was an impressive act.

He even went as far as leaving most of these weapons behind with a disdainful look in his eyes; he only took a certain single dagger along that looked like it had gemstones with magical properties inlaid. An interesting choice of weapon to say the least, but Ardyn almost wanted to inquire about the fact that he left several lances behind.

But there was no time for that, seeing as Ignis immediately straightened back up and nodded saying that he was good to go again.

How utterly peculiar.

Well, Ardyn was not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. He could have easily done this by himself, but two people made it easier. All they needed to do was to deactivate the mechanism by destroying the important parts of the machine and killing its creator before he could repair it. Keeping Besithia, a man who would be on the verge of turning into Daemon at this point, in check while also taking care of the machine at the same time was something that required more energy than it was worth in the end. But the Immortalis project was not allowed to be finished under any circumstances – as long as the final step failed to complete, the machine he had built for himself would remain useless and vacant beneath the earth in the second facility.

Ignis definitely looked unsettled once he looked at the base of a MT, however. Just for a split second Ardyn could see the horror sending a jolt through the other’s body.

“Some odd twenty years ago, a duo of Lucian Crownsguard found their way into this place. Sent as spies to retrieve information on the MT project, all they absconded with in the end was a single infant. A minor setback at best.”

“Prompto...”

“Not used in this project, he all but grew up like a normal child, the fact he is a perfect clone of Verstael Besithia, head of the MT project notwithstanding. A Lucian at heart, a Niff by birth.”

It had played well into Ardyn’s cards. Originally he had been planning on separating Prompto from his friends and send him through this hell, perhaps as a means to further his dedication to the cause. Sowing seeds of doubt was something Ardyn was good at, but Noctis was unwaveringly loyal to his friends. Even if one of them had been a literal test tube baby, a perfect clone of one of the sick men who had all but butchered hundreds and thousands of his people for the sake of their perverse research.

Ignis himself definitely looked green around the gills as he followed Ardyn with his gaze locked firmly onto the ground. His knuckles were white as he held onto his dagger like some sort of lifeline – Lucians were so _sensitive_ when it came to something as simple as MT production.

It wasn’t like they used other humans or children any longer! He almost barked out a laugh as he led Ignis into the main room, to the machine that was most important to Besithia’s designs.

Surely enough, the man stood there with his back to the door that they walked in through. Alas the sound of Ardyn walking in made him turn around, and Ignis stopped as soon as Ardyn did.

“Good evening, old friend.”

“When did… who is _that?_ ”

“Do not worry about my companion here.”

It was pretty clear that Besithia immediately understood that either Ardyn had betrayed Niflheim and teamed up with someone from the Lucian Crownsguard – or that this Crownsguard was someone who had joined Niflheim. He did not inquire further, apparently to see how Ardyn would act.

“I had thought you would be in Zegnautus Keep celebrating the death of the Oracle and handing the Ring of the Lucii to the emperor.”

Ardyn shook his head. “Alas, the ring was lost at sea – and Emperor Aldercapt’s unfortunate _condition_ had progressed too far by the time I returned from Altissia.”

He almost casually got closer to the machine; that much was easy at least. He had vaguely appraised Ignis of the situation before they had entered the room; the Lucian knew when to make his move. Besithia himself did not look like his case of Scourge had progressed any further in the meanwhile.

Ardyn himself had taught the man all he needed to know about the Scourge. How a strong will could suppress it for extended times, even if the end result was inevitable. Working with miasma that closely only meant that sooner or later any scientist involved with this project would succumb to this sickness that had plagued Eos for millennia. Hells, it was Besithia’s very plan to turn into a Daemon at the right moment.

“How unfortunate. I had hoped he would hold out a little longer.”

“Mhm,” Ardyn hummed, a hand on the machine. “Ignis?”

“Wait. Scientia?” Ardyn didn’t turn around to see that Besithia was now staring at the young man who likely still stood there perfectly straight with his head slightly bowed into Ardyn’s general direction.

He pat the machine a little. The mechanism was very delicate once one knew where its weaker points were. Those production-line MTs, clones of Besithia that were currently in animated suspension and being infected with the Scourge of the sake of enhancing their physical feats, they had no idea what was coming. A small mercy, perhaps. Not that Ardyn had any qualms about killing humans, even children, but something about those creatures felt more like mercy than anything else. Born to be nothing but playthings in the grand scheme, dead before they ever truly gained consciousness. He had gladly helped with the project because he needed its firepower to overwhelm Lucis, drive the Lucii to make their choice and let their Chosen be born – then later he needed MTs to hone Noctis’ skills and hatred. Without either there was no way a boy like that could ever take him on. Too merciful. Too friendly. King Regis had raised a perfectly normal boy when he should have been raising a royal sacrifice.

“If you would be so kind.”

“As you wish, Your Majesty.”

He only heard the sound Ignis lunging forward – he still was exhausted, too exhausted for a proper fight – and using his momentum to knock Besithia off his feet. Unexpected movement tactics were simple enough to execute, even if the one using them was a 22-year-old on the verge of collapse. He then used his weight to pin Besithia to the ground, and Ardyn threw a glance into their general direction.

Besithia definitely looked like he was about to yell something, but Ignis silently put his dagger against the man’s throat.

“Now then. I fear I’ve let this go on for too long, all things considered. Trying to usurp the emperor, fine. Petty squabbles over power keep things interesting, especially when both sides are infected with a hefty dose of miasma slowly but steadily corroding their minds over the years. _Years._ That is rather impressive, considering the average timespan between infection and turning is… about six months at best. Twenty years is an outstanding amount of time; not many people managed that. Most of those who did turned into something large and intimidating, destructive even. Alas, as amusing as it would be to watch what your creation can do… Change of plans, old friend.”

He shrugged at one of the MTs in the pods. Those creatures would not be turning into infantry that the empire would use in a war they had long since won. None of them would be dropped near the prince’s last known position in hopes of catching him and dragging him to a public execution to make an example of him and what would happen to anyone who dared disobey the almighty Emperor Aldercapt. That was how the man had managed to keep control over Niflheim even once people caught on that their formerly beloved leader who cared about the country and its people had turned into a sadistic despot who thirsted for a power that was never supposed to be his.

After a little more evaluation, Ardyn decided that getting to the bottom of this machine would be too much work. He was not in the mood for looking for a needle in the haystack.

He clicked his fingers, and once more his weapons burst back into reality. He heard the surprised snort somewhere behind him, heard Ignis kick Besithia for making noise. Perhaps not the most elegant solution, but the most practical one. He shrugged vaguely enough and sent his weapons flying, reddish-crystalline arcs that hit metal, tore into half-completed and half-Daemonised MTs without their machine exoskeleton. There would be no completion of the Immortalis project now.

“The Niflheim ruling council has been officially rendered obsolete with this day.” Ardyn was mostly talking to himself at this point. “The Oracle is dead – Emperor Aldercapt is dead. The Lucian king cannot use his own Crystal. Truly, a marvellous cacophony of things gone wrong, wouldn’t you agree?”

He got no answer from Besithia – the man only gurgled, and once that sound died down Ardyn heard a loud thunk. He turned around to see Ignis wipe the blood that was mostly black at this point on the man’s cape with an expression that only spoke of utter disgust.

“You should really lighten up. It would have been rather funny to hear his thoughts.”

Ignis’ expression remained disgusted as he kicked the body on the floor. “I’m afraid my humour stops at megalomaniacs experimenting on human beings.”

“My, my. You Lucians truly all react the same to this – though, granted, most humans would at this point. Clones or not, your little friend is the living example that they are perfectly capable of living.”

“...”

Ardyn sighed – Ignis’ expression remained the same. The machine was going to blow up soon enough, considering all the damage Ardyn had done to it in such a short time.

“Well then, fine, be like that. Let’s get going – I’m sure you would like to see the city of your birth one more time before the sun sets for the final time and never rises again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the second thing i gotta say is.  
> episode ignis' alternate path is pretty interesting. though with episode prompto clearly not taking place in that, i was left wondering how the hell they take care of besithia and the immortalis project. they'd likely hear way too late that a fucking GIANT ROBO WORM is tearing shit up over in niflheim? esp since i'm someone who believes in the episode prompto aranea is actually ardyn in disguise theory??
> 
> what happens to the entire mt project and the immortalis project in the alternate ending... please... i wanna know...


	4. Your head held high, your banners falling.

Insomnia was called the crown jewel of Lucis for many reasons, but the most popular theory to go with was that it glittered like a gem in the light of the setting sun. All those skyscrapers’ windows reflecting the gold light made it look like the entire city was built out of precious metal instead of glass and concrete, lesser metals and the like. The colour was still an overwhelming black – elegant yet dark. Whenever the sun rose and whenever it set, however, it looked like there was fire dancing in the crystal black, a blaze against the inky colour of the night sky. The first time Noctis decided to cross that invisible line they had drawn between each other in an attempt to keep things proper when they were teenagers was one such sunset. The neighbouring complexes had glimmered in the light, thrown it into the otherwise dark apartment that Ignis had just entered.

It had been clean. Noctis was sitting on a chair instead of lying draped across the couch like he normally did at that time of the day. The second he heard the door fall into the lock he had gotten up and waited for Ignis to take off his shoes and walk over. Ignis still remembered that day better than most other days in his life – that dreadful day he waited for news to come out of Tenebrae notwithstanding. He could recall that there was an ambulance pulling into the street just the second that Noctis pulled him down to his level to press his lips against Ignis’. He remembered how they were by all means making out right there before both he and Noctis bolted away from each other with flushed faces. The way Noctis tumbled over the chair behind him as he did that, the way he fell on the floor. How they both started laughing after they tried to apologise to one another, how they both murmured the same words at the same time. First an apology. Then the laughter.

Then they had both whispered the same three words followed by a different name.

Seeing the city during sunset once more drove a hot dagger into his heart. It was harder than most other things to not burst into tears right there as he followed Ardyn into the city. The chancellor seemed to be having a good time, all things considered. There was a spring in his limp, his coat billowing in the dry gust that whisked through the street they were entering the city with. The longer he looked at him, the more Ignis was convinced that he truly was who he had claimed to be in Gralea.

King Regis had had a similar limp; Noctis had, too. They both said that it was genetic, that even King Mors and every other ruler before them had displayed that to a certain degree. There was no leg it primarily manifested in; some had even lost use of their legs after a while of using the Crystal’s magic. King Mors had, as far as Ignis remembered people talking about the man. He had spent his last years bound to a wheelchair and miserably waiting for his failing body to finally give in. Perhaps it was a small mercy that King Regis had not been forced to experience the same thing. A small mercy that Noctis would never have to do the same if the gods got their will. He would have walked a hundred miles on bleeding feet over poisoned spikes if it meant that Noctis would be able to live, to walk wherever he wanted to. His exhaustion was catching up to him, and the ring in his pockets was just a reminder of a possible outcome of this story. Noctis, dead. No more walking. Nothing ever again. No flustered whispers when Gladio and Prompto were both long asleep. No sudden bouts of kingly composure, no reassurances that he would share the burden no matter what. Noctis would be dead. Dead and gone.

Finally his legs gave in. Ignis crumpled to the ground with barely more than a soft sigh, the beautifully glittering city ahead of him silent and judging. The journey back to Lucis in the airship not too far behind them had barely been something he considered rest.

At around the halfway point he had nodded off, but the images his mind conjured up had been punishment for his deeds that day. He felt like he had been drowning, falling through the air without anything or anyone stopping him, with his friends’ betrayed faces and Noctis’ confused and mildly terrified order directed at Gladio to do what Ignis said. Passing out on a street leading into the city that he had turned his back to what felt like an eternity ago seemed like a small punishment for someone who had turned his weapons against his friends. He didn’t even consider Besithia a harmless victim of circumstance – but the fact that he had killed the man in cold blood caught up to him. He had had zero qualms about slitting his throat and letting him die there.

That was what terrified Ignis.

Even a war criminal should have been brought before a proper court. The ruling would have been absolute. Yet he had been judge, jury and executioner, considering that Ardyn had not cared at all.

Speaking of Ardyn, the man stopped and whirled around, the bounce still in his steps as he walked over to where Ignis had collapsed.

“You took your time with doing that, dearest Ignis.” There was something about that tone of voice that only made Ignis gag audibly. He hated the man. He hated _himself._ But if there was even the smallest chance of changing Noctis’ fate with this…

He let out a wheeze – it was interrupted by Ardyn grabbing him by the back of his shirt and _yanking_ it. Ignis let out a startled sound somewhere between groan and yelp and rolled himself onto his back. Ardyn immediately retaliated by grabbing him by the collar and pulling him up. They were face to face, with Ardyn crouching over him. There was that change of face again, the malicious glint in his eyes as they seemed to gleam in the light of the setting sun, the black grime rolling out of the corner of his mouth. Was that what the man looked like at night? Was he letting himself go to intimidate Ignis? Was that just an unfortunate side-effect? Ignis hadn’t exactly learned much about the Cosmogony – he knew what most people knew. That the Chosen would purge the blight upon their star with the help of the gods. The fact that the Chosen would have to die or that the Accursed who let the Starscourge fester could look and sound like the oddball Chancellor of Niflheim was not mentioned anywhere.

“You’ve held yourself up commendably long, inhumanely even. But I’m rather certain you can walk another mile or so, no?”

That was not the tone of someone who would take no for an answer.

Ignis drew in a shaky breath.

“Give me… give me a minute and I will, Your Majesty.”

“Good boy.”

The sun was nearly gone at this point. The sky was turning inky, it was swallowing up the blaze of the sunset. Soon enough nothing but darkness would remain. There’d be no light falling in through the windows as he woke up the next morning in bed next to Noctis.

Never again.

* * *

Insomnia at night was another sight to behold, but Ignis was not someone to marvel at the sights when the streets were empty and desolate safe for the Daemons that were crawling out now. He could feel their hungry gazes on him – he was a living being in a city that was, by any means, dead and empty. His body was numb at this point, having followed Ardyn for hours on end with no rest or respite for his exhausted muscles and tired mind.

Ignis was actually fairly certain that the only reason why the Daemons were not pouncing on him to tear him into pieces was Ardyn. Something about the Accursed dispelled them even if he was supposed to be their leader.

“Stop staring at them already, you’ll only rile them up,” Ardyn snarled, “and keep up the pace.”

Ardyn had led them past the Citadel, surprisingly enough. The city was in shambles around it; a huge chunk of the Citadel having been simply blown away by something or someone. There were a handful of crashed airships that had taken down buildings with them, but something about the destruction surrounding some parts of the city was baffling altogether.

It was only when he realised where Ardyn was going that Ignis noticed something else that had been conspicuously missing so far.

The statues.

The Old Wall was in complete disarray – or rather, Ignis had never seen the statues move on their own; no one had. They did not move now, but they were crumpled in places that they had definitely not been in before. Someone or something had made those statues move, and the Ring of the Lucii felt like a hot piece of coal in his pockets. King Regis had always said that he did not have the strength to raise the Old Wall in defence of Lucis, or even just Insomnia. Someone else must have raised these statues from their slumber.

Ardyn was definitely leading him to one of the monuments raised for one of the old kings; the Founder king, the one they called the Mystic.

Somewhere behind him the Daemons made a strange noise. It sounded peculiarly like them discussing something in whatever language these creatures spoke. Before Ignis even had the chance to ask about what the hell any of that meant, he realised that he had once more fallen. He barely even felt his body any longer, all of his senses dulled and his limbs unresponsive.

There were splatters of blood on the ground now that he looked at it vaguely enough. Fresh blood – his own blood. He’d hit the ground with his face first, and all of a sudden the dullness gave way to a sharp pain in his face, something spreading from his lower legs.

Ardyn whirled around and let out an inhuman hiss that made Ignis recoil – the Daemons that had toppled him like common prey however did too, and after a moment of silence they decided to flee.

“Nyx Ulric you are not, it would seem.”

Ignis had heard that name before. He was one of the star members of the Kingsglaive, a man known for unnecessary heroics because he had had enough of losing people. A man who often suffered in silence rather than burden anyone else with what ailed him; not unlike Noctis in that regard. “… I’m no… Kingsglaive.”

He slowly dragged himself to his knees again. The exhaustion was hitting him fully by now, and he knew that he would be unable to continue moving. Up ahead was the monument that had been erected in honour of the Founder King, a man who had done all in his power to make Eos a better place. The man who had first received the prophecy that the Cosmogony foretold. Or so everyone believed.

Ignis wiped the blood off his face knowing that his nose would continue bleeding for a while. Blood generally riled Daemons up, but Ardyn had actually managed to scare them off. The street was empty, desolate. Pitch black – electricity in this district had likely been severed the moment the hostilities at the signing ceremony began. It was too close to the Citadel for anything else.

“Kingsglaive, Crownsguard, does it really matter?”

It mattered, but Ignis held his tongue. He knew a rhetoric question when he was asked one; to someone as ancient as Ardyn all of these had to be the same – Kingsglaive, Crownsguard, hunters. Lucis was large enough, and those three groups did similar enough things that someone who did not care about the details like Ardyn would just call all of them the same thing.

The Accursed sat down in the middle of the street, opposite Ignis. Normally the advisor would have asked about that, but he was immensely grateful for the rest right now. Every fibre of his body was screeching for it, begging him to slow down. To lie down in the street and die to ease his conscience. Then he realised that Ardyn was waiting for an answer – had that not been a rhetoric question?

“I… I suppose it doesn’t matter. What about… Nyx Ulric, then?”

“Quite fortunate indeed is the fool who dares make demands of what royalty offers him. You can count the people who put on the Ring of the Lucii the night Insomnia fell on one hand,” Ardyn held up three fingers, “but those who survived that encounter are fewer still. To think that the old men so disconnected from the world would let blood of the Oracle live when malicious lust for power and the sincere desire to protect the future were met with immediate death and a blood price to pay once the sun rose.”

Ignis saw Ravus, crouching next to him and staying out of sight of the imperials. They had only just decided to team up to get to the altar and save Lunafreya and Noctis together; an alliance out of necessity. He had stared at the prosthetic arm for a good few moments before Ravus had rolled his eyes at him and asked about it. How the man admitted that he had thought he could do what Noctis had been born for, and how he had been punished for his arrogance. Cut down to size – lost use of an arm.

“Ulric… put on the ring?”

“And in his wake, for a few hours, he was by any means a king – commandeering the Old Wall to fend off Lucian enemies, fire and thunder ever at his behest alongside the power of the Kings of Yore! A sight to behold, truly a sight to behold. But even when he managed to take down the man who had butchered his king and saviour mere hours ago, his life wasted away in the rising sun, for dawn was the time limit the Lucii gave him. With the Oracle and the ring out of the city, he had fulfilled his last commands, had managed to keep alive she who would protect the future with her own life. And thus he passed away quietly, in the morning sun. How poetic.”

Somehow the picture Ardyn painted with his words both fit Nyx Ulric and absolutely did not work with the image of him that Ignis had acquired over the years while hearing about his exploits and meeting the man. True enough, Ulric was reckless when someone he cared about was involved. The man had a full-blown meltdown exactly once; otherwise he was calm and collected because someone needed to be in the wake of what was happening to Lucis, to their home even long after it had fallen. He wasn’t exactly the best at conversation – none of the Glaives were too happy to speak to Insomnia residents considering the sheer amount of vitriol hurled at them on a daily base – but there was something about the way he instructed Noctis in the finer points of warping that was… warm. Familiar. Friendly, even. Ignis never talked to him, but he remembered hearing the instructions he had given. How he had helped the members of the Glaive back up when nausea had washed over them after warping, how he had hesitated to put a hand on Noctis’ back and asked if the prince was okay. That had been one of the few instances someone who had not involved with the Crownsguard had known the number system that people used to ask how bad Noctis’ back was.

The way the prince had squeezed out “four and a half” to say that it was going to be a minor nuisance at best once the flare ebbed down, the way Ulric had nodded and decided to sit on the ground and instead talk about the practical applications of warping in combat. Not a dry rehash of what was written in books and mentions of King Regis; it was a full-blown experience report, right down to how straining it could be if overdone.

Somehow him putting on the Ring of the Lucii seemed… wrong, somehow.

Ardyn had gotten up while Ignis had been thinking and moved closer; too close almost. Once again they were face to face, a smile on Ardyn’s face that was nothing short of unsettling.

“Careful, Ignis. Frown any deeper and it might stay with you for the rest of your life – you wouldn’t want your handsome little face to be marred by such an ugly expression, would you?”

His vision was swimming at this point. Ardyn’s face was a contorted mess, the darkness and debris around him an incomprehensible mess of grey and inky dark blue. Ignis blinked several times, trying to think of something to say, just one thing to shoot back at the thinly disguised insult – had it even been an insult? – that Ardyn had just offered him. But no sounds escaped him; his throat was completely dry. He could feel the warmth rolling off Ardyn in waves, and for a split second of clarity Ignis wondered if he was going mad right here.

He hadn’t even noticed that he had once more fallen forwards and only when his face hit Ardyn’s shoulder his world shifted back into reality for a spell. The monument up ahead. The crumbled skyscraper that looked like someone had lopped its top off with a sword. The craters in the streets, the crashed airships. He was painfully aware of everything, but still he remembered how one afternoon he and Noctis had just walked through that street discussing school and university. It had just been two years ago. Two years, and now Insomnia looked like this.

Ardyn definitely was warm. Perhaps Ignis was just cold, but something about that warmth felt feverish, wrong.

Probably the Scourge.

The last thing he managed to think of before he fell unconscious at long last were all those people who complained about feeling hot even in relatively cold weather. How many of these had already contracted the Scourge?

* * *

He learned quickly enough that the only way to make a Daemon ignore him was to intimidate him. Ardyn had been on his way out when Ignis awoke next with the strangely milky-looking sun high in the sky.

“I reckon it is about a week before the sun stops rising altogether. After that, with much luck the miasma will thin out occasionally and give a false impression of a sunset, but you ought to enjoy the sun while it lasts,” was all the man had said before leaving. Ignis had only then realised that he was in the Citadel, one of the unused rooms. Someone – definitely Ardyn – had patched up the injuries he had sustained. Something felt different about the bruises, too; as if they were already healing despite Ignis not really feeling rested or well altogether.

The man remained missing for the day, and only three hours after Ignis woke up, he watched the sun set on the horizon. He’d spent the rest of his time locked away in the Citadel; the Daemons did not follow him there. It wasn’t a haven but for some reason they stayed away, their hungry eyes occasionally glancing up at the window he was glaring out of but never once walking over a seemingly invisible border.

The second day, he attempted to stay out longer. He only managed an hour before he retreated back into the Citadel in the dark, with no lights to guide him. He had always been good at managing without human contact, but this was driving him mad. He was all on his own – those who survived the empire’s attack and the subsequent lockdown had all fled the city once the grasp of the empire had lessened as its downfall began. The city was completely desolate as far as Ignis knew. If there were still people around here then they had to be complete fools.

Just like him.

The third day, he started hissing back at the Daemons. And finally he saw a change. He had to intimidate them into submission, because at the base of every Daemon remained a living being. That was the horror of the Starscourge.

On the fourth day, exactly what he had predicted kicked in at long last. He nearly fell over where he was standing when the sharp disconnect hit him. He had pre-emptively taken everything out of the Armiger and scattered it somewhere where it couldn’t be a dreary reminder of what he had done; the facility in Niflheim had been the perfect place for that. All those notebooks. All the properly maintained and well-used weapons. He’d even left his spare glasses there, the slight fuzziness of the world a perfect fit for him now.

He was rather amazed that it had taken Noctis so long to forcibly eject Ignis from his own magic, and as he sat there on his knees in the middle of a desolate street in Insomnia, all he could do was laugh. The sun was barely up and already looked like it was about to start setting, the air cold and surprisingly stagnant. It was as if the last pitiful rays of the sun couldn’t penetrate the veil of darkness that was starting to envelop Eos.

His laughter only grew louder – he’d forgotten what it felt like to not have the ability to call upon things with both a short moment of focus. Hells, he had lived with it longer than he had lived without it, and this was like losing a limb, a sense. The connection was gone – Noctis had finally rejected the man who had betrayed his trust, his heart. His shrill laughter turned into sobbing.

Anything to change that fate. Anything. Anything, _anything_. Even if it meant following Ardyn like an obedient lapdog, even if it meant this heartbreak. If Noctis lived in the end he would gladly toss everything he held dear away. Even Noctis.

_Especially_ Noctis.

He roamed the streets that night, his remaining weapon at his side. It was enough to keep the small fry in check – hells, they even danced if he threatened them into doing it. He had not known that Daemons were this… easy to manipulate.

His opinion changed the second he came face to face with a creature that towered over him. Three times his size in height alone, impressive claws and scales that looked sturdy enough to withstand anything but delicately placed thrusts and hits. He wouldn’t be able to do much with that, dagger or not. With Noctis disconnecting him from the power of kings his ability to call upon the elements had died. If he had ever learned how to warp he would have been rendered unable to warp, too, according to what a survivor of the Kingsglaive had said. From one moment to the other there had been a sharp disconnect, a dull pain that hit their heads and left as quickly as it had appeared, leaving them unable to use any of their powers.

Intimidating goblin-tier Daemons and Arachne-tier Daemons was not that hard.

A Deathclaw-tier that looked stronger than any other he had seen in his life was a whole other calibre however. And the creature had seen him, was staring at him with its sharp claws raised. Alert. Ready to strike should Ignis either decide to attack first or decide to run away.

As long as he remained still it would likely get bored and leave him alone. At least it would have if there were any living things in Insomnia other than Ignis. He was still mildly disoriented from exhaustion and the hour he had spent sitting around laughing and crying at the same time. This was less than ideal – a single man with a dagger against a Daemon of overwhelming size and strength. That was exactly how so many of the stories about the hunters whose dog tags Noctis had retrieved for Dave had gone. A hunter, a Daemon. The Daemon generally walked away as victor, and even if the hunter won there was a good chance that they bled to their deaths before they ever managed to return to civilisation. There was absolutely no civilisation left here; Ignis was standing in the remains of Insomnia with naught but the Daemon in front of him.

“Well. This could have gone better, but I… do deserve this.” His low whisper was enough to make the creature quiver in anticipation, and Ignis almost let out a dry laugh.

So much for attempting to get as close to Ardyn as he could without betraying his true intentions. The man had vanished without a trace, and Ignis was about to meet his end on the claws of this creature. All of that for nothing but a broken heart and no ability to change Noctis’ fate – at least he still had the Ring of the Lucii. Without that the Crystal would remain a lifeless rock that lent its power to Noctis, but Noctis would never be able to fully harness its power. He could grow old if no one ever found the ring and Ardyn did not decide to flatten wherever they were hiding out of boredom.

The sun had set. It was dark in the street.

He slowly reached for his dagger, and his opponent was clicking its teeth – by the gods, these things had _teeth_ – maliciously. The only living being in Insomnia against a Daemon that could crush him in mere seconds. Still, Ignis wanted to go down fighting. Fighting, screaming, thrashing.

He wouldn’t even get to thrash, all things considered. He’d read about these things, they had fought lesser specimen in the past. Even a lesser Deathclaw could easily tear a single hunter into shreds in a matter of seconds, no matter how trained they were. The general tactic to take on one of these was to be at least two people, force the Daemon to turn around time and time again. Its tail was its weakest point, the very point where the scales were less hard, more open to leave room to pierce longer weapons into its flesh. Light-infused weapons existed, Ignis had left one such lance in Niflheim.

A slow exhale. His hand was curled around the dagger attached to his belt by now. A dry gust blew through the street, and somewhere behind him he heard the telltale cackle and scuttle of the lowest tier of Daemon around Insomnia. Goblins remained pathetic even at higher strengths; their strength came from their sheer number overwhelming people. The others were what the Kingsglaive had classified as Ahriman, some twisted take on an insect with an insatiable hunger for flesh. There had been reports about these things tearing people into pieces and gobbling it down with gusto in the middle of a fight. They were not particularly bright, but surprisingly brutal.

He moved as fast as he always did. The dagger went flying.

It clanked against a claw.

Time seemingly came to a standstill as his vision went completely dark. Something – no, _someone_ – was clicking their tongue behind him. There was that strange warmth again, covered his eyes, against his back. Ardyn Lucis Caelum had appeared out of thin air as he liked to do. Had put a hand across Ignis’ eyes and pulled the advisor backwards. Ignis raised his hands to the hand covering his eyes, but all Ardyn did was click his tongue again.

“Ignis, Ignis, Ignis. How reckless of you.”

A dry gust blew through the streets, and Ignis heard the telltale rustle of Ardyn’s coat, felt the cloth move slightly behind him. The man was breathing down his neck for a second, then opted to put his chin on Ignis’ right shoulder – which meant that the hand covering his eyes was Ardyn’s left.

“You should not be attacking your allies, no matter how unbecoming they may be. Had you but waited a few seconds longer, it would have realised that you are with me instead of a simple lost soul wandering the streets with no sense of self-preservation. Now we’ll have to put it down and make an example of it.”

Ardyn’s voice was barely more than a whisper, directly into Ignis’ ears. It sent cold shivers down his spine; he shuddered against the chancellor.

“V-very… well,” even his voice sounded like he was shivering.

“Pray excuse my absence – there was something I needed to retrieve. Perhaps it might help you, considering that you left all your weapons where none can ever reach them again.”

Finally the hand was lifted and Ignis was able to see. The Deathclaw was standing there, watching its master and its prey; from somewhere down the street he heard the chattering and clattering of lesser Daemons fleeing the site. He did not dare to turn around – royal protocol. He might as well keep his act in check.

Ardyn waited for a moment, then grabbed Ignis by the shoulder and forced him to turn around to look at the man. He put his left hand’s index finger on his own lips and raised the right arm. A long, pristinely glimmering weapon; seaweed stuck in its pronged head. Ignis had only seen the weapon depicted in books talking about ancient weaponry; in history books. It was what Lunafreya had held the day she raised the Hydraean from her slumber. The day she begged for a miracle as she rose the royal arms from across Eos to grant Noctis enough power to defeat the raging goddess. The weapon that had vanished the day she died, swallowed up by the sea.

“The Trident of the Oracle,” Ignis whispered while Ardyn cracked a devilish grin at him.

“Consider it a… royal loan. Especially considering that even if you had left your weapons in them, you would have lost access to them by now.”

He had willingly crossed a line that he had sworn he would never cross. He had seemingly betrayed everyone in the favour of this man – perhaps adding blasphemy to his future list of atrocities that they would hold against him in case the sun returned and Noctis lived was less of a problem than he anticipated.

The Deathclaw behind him was moving. He heard its claws scrape against the street, likely leaving deep cuts in the cement. His time was up, his dagger was still somewhere over there. It was taking what Ardyn offered, blowing his cover.

Or dying.

Ignis Scientia once more bent his knee to a king he loathed when Ardyn handed the Trident of the Oracle over with that sadistic little grin of his. The man was _enjoying_ this, was enjoying how Ignis bowed to him with one hand firmly wrapped around the weapon.

“Your Majesty.”


	5. the song of two bloodlines echoing through the dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... i dunno how im writing this so fast. its hesperus just more extreme. like, productivity amped to the max
> 
> next chapter's almost completely planned too, this is. wild? i think the last time i felt that eager to write was during nano when i wrote "that which can eternal lie"?

Everything following the second they landed was a blur. Noctis had absolutely no recollection of how he ended up in a hotel bed – only a quick flash of hanging off Prompto’s shoulder as they trudged through the blistering streets in the evening sun. He remained curled up in his bed and refused to answer his two friends, refused to answer Talcott and Iris when they arrived with the Marshal in tow. He simply stared at the wall, unable to fully process what was going on.

Somewhere in front of the door Ravus Nox Fleuret was almost furiously discussing logistics with Cor Leonis – normally it should have been Ignis who did that. It should have been Ignis who calculated how to fortify the larger settlements quickly enough, who should have figured out that the Chancellor of Niflheim, one Ardyn Izunia, was the Accursed that the prophecies spoke of.

Noctis heard all that but remained still, his breathing as shallow as before. If he just reached into the Armiger he could still feel Ignis’ presence there.

Ignis’ parts were completely empty. He had left nothing, would likely not leave anything ever again. Noctis was tempted to see if he could put something in there, reach out to Ignis – but the breach of an Armiger space assigned to someone else was a strain of energy that Noctis could not afford. He didn’t have the energy for this to begin with; only the Ring of the Lucii amplified powers enough to allow that kind of thing, now that he thought about it.

Every time he remembered the ring, his mind went back to his father, smiling as he saw him off, the photos plastered on the newspapers just a few days later, the horrible, horrible truth that his father had died and Noctis had been too far away to hold his hand. It wandered back to Luna with her defiant glare as she bled, the sad look in her eyes as she shook her head in the middle of whatever landscape they were in, her fond smile as she bid him farewell, far out of his reach.

He had just wanted to see her again, forced engagement or not. He would have loved to take her on a walk in Insomnia together with his dad, perhaps even her brother. For even just the illusion of a peace, Noctis would have done anything. But all he had gotten were failures upon failures, piling on his back and unevenly distributed to his friends. And now Ignis had left him.

When Insomnia fell he had thought that the rug had been pulled out below his feet. He had been in a stupor following Altissia, was in a stupor now.

He wanted Ignis back.

The nagging feeling of him remaining just out of reach persisted as the sun set so much earlier than it should have. Two days since Gralea, two days since Ignis had left his side after he had sworn to remain there so many times.

On the third day, Noctis started summoning his weapons, scattered the royal arms across the floor. Prompto had watched how the weapons vanished in utter dismay, asked time and time again if there was something he could do. Deep down Noctis appreciated his best friends’ efforts, but all he had snarled out was that he wanted to be alone. As if to accentuate the demand, he dropped the Axe of the Conqueror right next to Prompto’s feet, and the blonde dropped what he had been holding and made a beeline for the door. The door fell shut, and Noctis let the weapon lie where it had fallen as he pulled the blanket over his head. At least no one attempted to bother him on that short day, and when he woke on the fourth day he nearly started crying. He choked the tears down and continued shutting the world out, kept the blanket over his head. That continued for hours, even though he heard muffled voices outside the room several times.

After what felt like an eternity, someone loudly opened the door and marched into the room. Before Noctis could repeat his demands of being left alone, someone had snatched his blanket away. The door loudly fell back into place, firmly shut.

Noctis writhed on the bed and opened one eye to look at who intruded like that – he was expecting Gladio.

It was Ravus instead.

The man was absolutely furious, his eyes shining with searing rage as he all but lunged to stand beside the bed and grabbed Noctis by the collar. Before Noctis could do as much as utter a single word Ravus had yanked him to at least sit straight.

“Enough of this nonsense!”

Noctis only tilted his head, though he could not properly hold it. The sudden movement made him dizzy, and his head nearly hit his own shoulder before he blearily straightened his neck. The anger displayed on Ravus’ face only increased.

“You,” his words were barely more than a hoarse and absolutely furious whisper, “have spent enough time wallowing in self-pity.”

Noctis only blinked slowly. Ignis would let him wallow in misery for as long as he needed. But Ignis wasn’t here. He only mouthed four words at Ravus: “Let go of me.”

The slap echoed through the room. Reality had shifted back into him violently, and he saw that Ravus was trembling. A single tear slid down the man’s admittedly very handsome face as he clenched his jaw and watched Noctis raise a hand to his now sore cheek.

“My sister did not die for you to completely shut down when something goes against what you expected!”

The two had not particularly gotten along back in Tenebrae. Noctis had been a traumatised child recovering from a most gruesome injury with the help of the Oracle; Ravus had been the teenage son of the Oracle, heir apparent to the throne of the country, the older brother of the girl who would stand beside the Chosen King. Where Luna had been friendly and forthcoming, where Oracle Sylva had been soothing, Ravus had always looked like a maelstrom compared to them. Perhaps it were his eyes, perhaps it was his stature. He was a proud, even arrogant teenager, and Noctis a shy child. Eight years separated them; and they both coped with what happened in Tenebrae differently. Noctis had his support in the Citadel – Ignis and his father first and foremost, Gladio and his father, Cor.

Ravus had no one but his sister, and slowly but steadily Noctis started to realise why this man hated him so much.

Indeed, there was something thoroughly unsettling about seeing Ravus’ stoic exterior coming undone in something as simple as tears of fury streaming down his face – though perhaps he had not cried over his beloved little sister as much as he needed to in the end.

“Yes, being betrayed, rejected even from what I heard, hurts! It hurts like the hells below have crawled out of the earth to torment you, and torment you specifically. It keeps your already failing heart in its grip and won’t let go until all you see is an endlessly vast sea of emptiness. And even then you’ll be there, waves crashing against the shore until the water rises and swallows you whole. I’ve been there! I’ve sat at the shores of this place for so long, I thought I would never manage to get my head above the water once it rose!”

Noctis blinked as Ravus let go of his collar to furiously wipe away the tears that just kept on streaming down his face.

“But I,” his voice was cracking, his fury since replaced with sorrow, “pulled myself back out without help. For Lunafreya… Luna’s sake. I meant to protect her, but I failed. Failed miserably. She gave her life to ensure that _you_ would be able to continue the fight against the darkness that now approaches rapidly. Rejection hurts. Betrayal hurts. Both together is a sting that never leaves, that haunts you in your dreams. Your dreams full of whatever haunts you – Daemon attacks, burning forests and your mother’s blood on your face, Ignis Scientia turning his weapon on you, take your pick! But where I had no one to help pull me out of that vast emptiness that crashed against me, you have not the time to be afforded sitting at this shore somewhere in your mind. Lucis – Eos at large – needs you. Needs at least your vague enough guidance. Cry in bed where none can see! Break down! Scream! But the people need you right now. Out in the open, where they can see you, even if all you want to do is roll up, shut the world out and die!”

Ravus was right, of course. Noctis had shut the world out, had scattered his weapons and nearly given up entirely because he had felt the familiar pull of Ignis somewhere in the depths of his magic. The betrayal stung – now that he was aware of it, he realised that he had felt exactly as Ravus had just said. The fact that the High Commander had just spilled something he apparently had told none, not even Luna, left Noctis mentally staggering in shock.

“Ravus...”

The man was shaking, an eerie echo of the emotions that Noctis had not let out regarding any of this. He hadn’t had the time to mourn his father. Jared. Luna. The Ignis he had grown up with, the man he thought he knew.

“I’m begging you… don’t let my sister have died in vain...”

Perhaps in the oddest action yet, Noctis leaned forwards and put his arms around the man’s quaking shoulders. His face still stung, but he understood why Ravus had done it. Before he could stop it, Noctis too had tears rolling down his face.

“I… I will. I’ll make sure her… sacrifice won’t be in vain. I’ll bring back the light. Somehow.” Ravus made a noise that sounded like a tortured animal when Noctis said that. It nearly broke his resolve, almost made him want to curl up again and pretend he was dead. “I just… need the Ring of the Lucii...”

* * *

He apologised to Iris and Talcott, to Cor.

Apologising to Prompto took more bravery than most things he had done in his life had, however. Thankfully enough, the blonde’s surprise at seeing Noctis out of bed seemed genuine and was not laced with fear after what happened yesterday. When he heard Noctis mutter an apology, all Prompto did was laugh. He put an arm around Noctis’ shoulders, though this time unusually gentle for the normally brash and hasty Prompto.

“’s alright, buddy. I’m just glad to see you’re doin’ okay. The apology’s nice and accepted, by-the-by, but I’m just honestly very happy to see you’re fine.”

Iris had commented on the obvious handprint on his cheek. Noctis had only called it a necessity, though he was sure the younger Amicitia was going to chew Ravus out for what he had done at some point. She could be surprisingly fierce for someone who had a painstakingly sown a plush moogle just for the de-facto ruler of her home country.

Still, he did not understand why Prompto was so quick to forgive him. He must have looked funny because Prompto did fidget around for a moment before letting go.

“Why are you… not mad?”

“Look, man,” the blonde scratched the back of his neck awkwardly and looked away, “I’m not the best at this kinda stuff. You know my life’s been a big fat flop outside of managing to befriend you. So I can’t even begin to _understand_ how you feel right now. Your reaction made sense. I guess. Can’t do more ‘cause I don’t get it; Gladio said to best lay off until you come to us by yourself, too. Something ‘bout this heartbreak stuff just… goes over my head. Sure, having a weapon dropped next to you ain’t fun! Really dude, it isn’t.”

That clear, nervous laugh was one that Noctis _knew._ Not as good as Ignis’ laugh, but he forced Ignis out of his thoughts for the time being. He focused on Prompto and the way the other shot him a warm smile now. Not condescending. Not full of pity. That was the same commoner who had approached Noctis on the first day of school one summer with a wide grin and absolutely no judgement. Friendly but not overbearing, someone he could trust.

“But you were having a stress shutdown. Grief shutdown? Both? Neither? Well anyway, I’d appreciate you not doing that again and it’s all fine in my book. You’re my friend – best friend! Ever at your side, and all that. Unless I get married. And no, not married to you. Love ya, but you’re not my type, Noct.”

That finally made Noctis snort.

“I’ll make sure to dye my hair blonde if I ever want to catch your affection.”

“Hey, you know I’d treat you right at least!”

“I know you would.”

Prompto slung his his arm around Noctis shoulder again with a snort. His heart still ached and he still kind of wanted to retreat back into the room he had spent the last few days in, but all things considered… it was good to have Prompto around.

* * *

Of course it was Gladio who delivered the blunt, bad news. That seemed to be the job of a Shield – advisors generally danced around the issue unless it was absolutely pressing, the Marshal was otherwise occupied with talking to Aranea’s mercenaries together with Ravus. Prompto had also danced around the issue, completely avoided mentioning Ignis at all. Perhaps in an attempt to make Noctis stay out longer, perhaps out of respect for the fact that Noctis’ heart was completely in shambles at this point.

Gladio never afforded him any breaks longer than strictly necessary. Noctis had known from the second he had left the room behind Ravus that it would be Gladio who would immediately break something over his head, metaphorically speaking. That was why he liked having Gladio around – even though he also _hated_ that tendency of his.

“You ever expelled someone from your Armiger? Dad said you at least received formal training from His Majesty before you left.”

“...”

“Answer me, Noct. Could you expel Ignis from your Armiger?”

The thought had crossed his mind, several times. But Noctis had clung to the familiar feeling of having Ignis’ presence in there like a drowning man, and now Gladio was asking the impossible of him. Well, perhaps not the impossible, but something that he could barely bear.

“In… in theory, yes.”

The Shield frowned. He looked like he had barely slept – most people involved with logistics did. The people of Lestallum were fortifying all possible entrances to the city, to ward off the suddenly increased Daemon activity during the longer nights. The sun was milky and would start setting before long; an eerie atmosphere hung over Lestallum as people called their relatives in other places, told them what to do, where to go. There were only a handful settlements that would be able to fortify with enough time; only a few that would remain connected to the electricity network across Lucis. They were forwarding messages to all other countries.

Accordo had said that they would try to keep their own cities up and under check. Altissia may have been partially ruined, but they could easily evacuate the people there to other parts of the country. Tenebrae’s leader was Ravus, even if the people despised him by now – and he had ordered them to go, gather, come to Lucis. Leave behind the hills and dales they knew for what Oracle Lunafreya had promised would take time to achieve, and she would have wanted them to live. Somehow invoking her had made the people he contacted less angry, Iris had said. Noctis meanwhile had cringed – those people hated him but they also pitied him, their fallen prince.

No replies came from Niflheim, apparently. Aranea’s group had remained the only one that had answered their calls. When giving that status report, Iris’ face had grown dark for a moment.

“According to Ravus there were entire chunks of the country just… empty. No people whatsoever, just clothes strewn around. Emperor Aldercapt tried to contain it by sealing off and putting everything under quarantine but...”

The empire called it the vanishing sickness. Noctis now knew that it was actually the Starscourge, rampant and unchecked, goaded on by its source – Ardyn.

Gladio clapped a hand on Noctis’ shoulder and pulled him back into reality.

“You listenin’?”

“… Sorry, could you repeat that? I was… thinking about something else.”

The Shield was not one for coddling. He was, as he often said himself, here to smash in the heads of people who were trying to hurt Noctis. To be a living shield, to put his own life on the line for his liege. He risked everything, including his own life. Still, that scowl hurt.

“I said, toss him out. The time for sentimental attachment’s over.”

Noctis frowned for a moment before watching a handful people follow a car to the entranceway. They made for a good makeshift blockade, and whoever had given them this car was obviously well off. The people were talking, one of them pointed at the sky and another laughed as they did that. The person in the car rolled down the window to look where the others had pointed to, then barked some sort of order at them. A Lucian noble, most likely.

Then he turned back to look at Gladio, the deep frown still on his face. He could feel Ignis there, alive. Ignis was still alive. Which meant that he was either truly doing this out of his own free will or he was being controlled, used somehow. Noctis was not able to use the shared Armiger space to reach out to Ignis and ask if this was truly happening the way the others saw. Part of him wanted to believe, now that he was partially out of his own mental funk, that Ignis was being controlled.

Still, Noctis put his arm up. It looked like he was about to summon a weapon, but he was reaching into the Armiger instead. There were fine, crystalline threads that connected him to the others. Prompto, Gladio. A king could lend this power to just about anyone who wanted it and who was strong enough to receive it – his father had been able to sustain both the Crownsguard and the Kingsglaive with this power, so theoretically Noctis should have that ability too. He put a hand on the fine thread that connected him to Ignis in that space.

They’d shared that since they had been children. Ignis had volunteered as the first test subject for whether Noctis had the ability to share the Armiger yet or not; they had been bound together like that since the awful days of recovery following Noctis’ return from Tenebrae. They had been eight and ten at the time – now they were twenty and twenty-two. Noctis definitely did not remember what it was like not to know that Ignis was bound to him, somehow, the emotional attachments and stolen kisses notwithstanding.

They had sworn time and time again that nothing would ever come between them. Noctis choked back a sob – he knew he already failed at holding back the tears – as he tightened his grip on that crystalline thread. This had been supposed to be a bond for life. Like his father and Clarus, his father and his mother. Ignis and Noctis had asked the king about that connection exactly once; the king had only stared out of the window after that question. Yes, he had said, you could feel if someone you shared that bond with died. A dull ache in the back of the ruler’s head, nothing more than a slight pain. And if the ruler disconnected that (or they died, as Noctis figured out years later) it would be a slap in the face for the other end. A splash of cold water, and the longer the bond had been going on, the more painful it would be.

Noctis severed the connection.

He dropped his arm and stared at the ground – even now Lestallum was nearly unbearably hot.

Gladio put a hand on his shoulder. “Sorry for pressin’ you like that, Noct. But it had to be done before Ardyn figured out how to use that to his advantage.”

He bit his own lip before forgoing protocol and wrapped his arms around Gladio before starting to all but howl in pain. He’d lost something that day. Something incredibly important to him.

All his Shield did was return the almost crushing embrace Noctis was giving him gently.

* * *

He sat on a roof that morning.

If it was a morning.

Heavy clouds blocked out the sun almost entirely by now, nothing more than a strange light filtering through it. If Ravus was to be believed, even that would stop eventually. Electric lights flickered in the streets, but up here on top of the Leveille, it was surprisingly mostly the weak natural light. Something about sitting here like this and staring at the sun was making his heart beat faster, probably because it was his destiny to bring that back. It seemed like an insurmountable task, but Noctis knew that normally things should not have gone that way. He should have had the Ring of the Lucii and Lunafreya’s steadfast support by his side alongside his other companions. He would not have marched into Insomnia all on his own – he would have gone with the grace of the gods.

But the Draconian remained missing in action. The Glacian had been killed just after Tenebrae had fallen. Noctis would have never had the full support of the Hexatheon, unless there was a way to contact dead gods and beg them for a covenant. Whether Luna was able to do something like that or not had followed her to her grave, and Noctis put a hand on the notebook.

He carried it around. Luna had never gotten to see the world the way she wanted. It was extremely silly, but he thought that perhaps if he just carried it around, whatever person she had been would never truly be gone completely and perhaps her soul in the beyond could see the world through it.

He carried around a spare pair of glasses Ignis had left in their normal luggage for exactly the same reason. Maybe the real Ignis was still out there, seeing the same sky as him. Waiting.

Noctis was almost entirely certain that Ignis was being controlled by Ardyn. There was absolutely no way he would betray him.

Most people usually shot him an expression full of pity whenever the topic came to Ignis and Noctis defiantly stood his ground and said that something was wrong with Ignis and that he would bring him back one day.

The only person who never belittled him and his opinion was Ravus. Out of all people in Lestallum, it was Ravus who agreed that something about Ignis was extremely off.

Granted, Ravus had his secrets. Sometimes his gaze seemed to glaze over when he looked at Noctis; sometimes there was this burning hatred that surfaced for split seconds only to vanish into what looked like resignation.

It was also Ravus who approached Noctis that morning, but instead of saying anything he simply sat down next to him and locked his gaze onto the sunrise.

Sunset.

Both.

Neither.

A few minutes passed in silence like that before Noctis removed his hand from the notebook.

“Any news from Niflheim?”

Ravus shook his head slowly. “None whatsoever. I offered Highwind almost all that remains of my family’s fortune, offered her an entire wing in Fenestala Manor – she still returned with nothing to show. At least the payment bought me her services for… roughly thirty years, she said.”

Noctis snorted. Aranea would have done that for free, all things considered. But she was a businesswoman at heart, and having two out of two royal rulers of a country in her debt worked nicely in her favour. Noctis, too, had offered her a considerable sum for her services the day before, but she had declined. Now he understood why she had done that.

“The darkness won’t last thirty years.” He put his hand on the notebook again and Ravus stared at it. “I swear.”

The search for the Ring of the Lucii was just about as fruitless as the search for Niff survivors was. It remained missing, even though Ravus had said that Lunafreya definitely had it when he had last seen her alive. They had all but begged Accordo to try fishing for it, but they had said that it was getting increasingly hard to get close to the water. Water-bound Daemons were starting to pop up in a rapidly increasing number, and two of the Accordan cities had been forced to evacuate completely and retreat further into the mainland islands. Altissia and that other city were completely abandoned by now.

“Did you and Luna knew it would come to this?”

Just about anything regarding what the Oracle and those related to the Oracle was a touchy subject for Ravus. He indeed looked like Noctis had stepped on his foot for a good second before narrowing his eyes and shaking his head.

“Vaguely. In order to cast out darkness the darkness needs to arrive first, but… I had not imagined it on that grand a scale, all things considered. I had thought that the Accursed would reveal themselves rather than cast all into eternal darkness. Luna… Luna likely knew.”

The man’s voice still went surprisingly soft whenever he spoke about his late sister. Noctis had never considered that perhaps Ravus had joined the empire out of necessity rather than anything else – he needed power to protect her, and the only place that gave him power had been Niflheim. Especially since he considered Lucis an enemy, the home of the man who had fled and left Tenebrae to burn. One day Noctis would have to ask about this, talk to Ravus properly.

Today was not that day.

They wouldn’t have that conversation during the day anyway. Unless they managed to put it off for long enough that the sun rose again, a conversation between king and king rather than fallen prince and Chosen.

“… Why are you up here?”

“The Marshal sent me to grab you. Apparently there’s something odd happening with the survivors of the Kingsglaive that arrived yesterday, and he wanted your counsel since it seems magic-related somehow.”

* * *

Ignis had devised the infusion technique almost entirely by himself. He had always been crafty with Elemancy, to a degree that Noctis was not – craftiness when it came to magic was a trait most members of the Kingsglaive shared, somehow. Most of those people had been born outside Insomnia, which made the fact that Ignis was just as crafty as them even more baffling; Ignis was Insomnia-born through and through. Hell, the Scientias were a family of royal retainers; they were effectively the only family in Lucis that had always been born in Insomnia and in Insomnia only.

Noctis tried to keep thinking back to watching Ignis try out if he could infuse his weapons with elemental magic as he watched the Glaives.

Cor and Ravus were standing beside him and also watching the spectacle.

He raised a hand. “Alright. So thunder and fire work. What about ice?”

Libertus Ostium shook his head. “I dunno about that, Your Majesty. That was always the hardest for us Glaive t’learn, and the only one who really could control it… died in action before Insomnia fell.”

That expression was so full of grief that it nearly made Noctis hiccup. He had little to no idea what went on with the Glaives generally – they were his father’s unit. He had trained with them, and he had swept a hopeful glance across the people who had arrived the other day. But Nyx Ulric was nowhere to be seen, and considering the fact that he and Libertus normally seemed to be joined at the hip when they weren’t being punished for insubordination in combat… It wasn’t likely that he would appear.

“Well, you won’t know until you try?”

The Glaives mumbled and then nodded, bowing to their king before attempting to conjure up ice.

Cor leaned over to Noctis. “And you are quite certain of what you told me before we came here?”

“Absolutely,” Noctis muttered back, “I snipped Ignis’ connection to the Armiger the other day. There were only him, Gladio and Prompto in that shared space. No members of the Crownsguard, no members of the Kingsglaive.”

Logically speaking, it should have been impossible for any of those Glaives to use their magic. They had lost that skill when King Regis died, they had continued their fight with their training and skill alone without relying on warps and magic. But now that the sun nearly stopped rising, those Glaives had arrived and confirmed a suspicion that Cor started to develop right around the time Noctis and the others returned from Gralea. He had felt strange that day, he had said, that a familiar headache was pounding its way back through his skull. Noctis always assumed that it was related to whatever injuries he had sustained when he had taken on the Blademaster all those years ago, but Cor said that there were several factors that played a role in how he developed his migraines. One of them had been that he did not get Elemancy the way he should have; a power that ate away at him just always out or reach.

The sharp disconnect he had felt when Regis died had also washed away the magic-related migraines. He had been furious when he realised that as he helped Prompto carry the unconscious and unresponsive Noctis to his room he was also having a magic-related migraine again.

But now the Glaives were here, marvelling at how one of them had traced an arc of ice in the air with their hand.

Ravus remained as still as ever, but he was opening and closing his actual hand. The one that was still flesh and blood. The gesture was familiar to Noctis – he often did it himself whenever he drew out the energy of the deposits scattered across the land. But Ravus was a Tenebraen noble, blood of the Oracle. He did not use Elemancy.

“Are you quite okay, sir?” The Glaive who had traced an arc of ice through the air was watching Ravus open and close his fist now, and all eyes were now on the High Commander.

He merely blinked and stretched out his hand, the palm to the open sky. “I… don’t know… but something here is...”

Only Oracles had the power to heal; only Oracles called forth light. There had been many instances where there had been siblings born to Oracles, often even a boy and a girl. Sometimes two girls. There was always a woman of the Nox Fleuret bloodline that inherited immense magical power and the ability to commune with the Six, a burden that was heavy but a burden that they carried with pride. The siblings who were not the Oracle or not girls usually had powers of their own, though never strong. Ravus himself had never showed a talent for the arcane – he had developed a taste for machinery during his time in Niflheim. It was how he fought.

Noctis thought he was imagining that sparkle that danced across Ravus’ hand for a second. But the man immediately took a step backwards and dropped his arm.

“Impossible!”

Then the next impossibility happened just a few minutes later – a child walked by, fell and scraped her knees. She was wailing with her parents nowhere in sight. Libertus Ostium broke away from the group who was now discussing how their powers had returned with the king, and Noctis watched the man. He was good with children.

Then he saw a green glow and the kid bounced back to her feet. She thanked him excitedly and skipped off again.

Noctis and Ravus exchanged a long, dark look.

Lunafreya had called the remaining royal arms from across Eos to help the Chosen against Leviathan. Whatever spell she had used, it had been one of extreme power – a power that could not be contained by a mortal body alone, let alone the battered and bruised and bleeding one of the Oracle. The weapons had scattered again after Noctis defeated the raging goddess and fell back to the altar, returned to where they had come from. It had been more than the twelve weapons he commanded now that Ravus had returned his father’s sword to him.

It stood to reason that whatever the Oracle had done, it was bleeding back into the country, to the people. His father’s magic returned to the Glaives and the Crownsguard, stronger perhaps now that it had been fed with an Oracle’s lifeblood. It might amplify whatever little power Ravus held enough to be able to use the magic inherent to his bloodline. There were reports of some sons at least being able to use the same light magic that Oracles used to a much, much weaker degree. Perhaps Ravus was turning into one of these people now.

This didn’t feel right.

Something about the world had come completely undone.

* * *

The sun did not rise again after the eighth day. It remained dark. Noctis, Prompto and Iris stood in the main plaza alongside all those other people as they waited for the sun to rise again. It never came, not even as Iris grabbed Noctis’ hand and squeezed it gently while staring up at the sky.


	6. You feel safe in the dark, don't you?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> emeto warning towards the end of the second paragraph; around the time the weird sound stops jsyk
> 
> hey, yknow, for someone who's been having bad luck since she was 16, this week's been thoroughly successful so far? not even like, weird gacha luck, actual luck, landing a job and everything?? wild. very extremely wild.
> 
> ANYWAY, you've probably noticed by now but i'm deviating from a strict sequence of chapters (its been ignis-noctis-ardyn-ignis-noctis-ignis as opposed to, say, amaranthus' characters1-4-ardyn-characters1-4-ardyn sequence)! not that it'll happen right now but it might mean that there's gonna be two chapters with the same main character in a row, maybe.

His hands were surprisingly cold and clammy as he got back up. Ignis had been trained to keep a cool head in any and all battle situations – the group needed it, after all. They needed a strategist, a person who managed to keep a complete overview of their enemies and the tactics they could employ while considering what sorts of supplies they had left.

His enemy; a Deathclaw. Large for its kind, its claws unusually sharp and it did not seem to mind that the Accursed was here now.

His allies; as far as he was concerned none, although he was fairly certain that Ardyn would step in if necessary. The man was definitely testing Ignis.

His supplies; none. He doubted that anything would work even if he had it on hand, considering how just a few hours ago his connection to Noctis’ magic had been cut off.

His weapons; the Trident of the Oracle in his hands, his dagger on the ground near the Deathclaw. Ardyn’s weapons, whatever he wound up using if he stepped in.

The weak point was obvious; the tail. With the trident at least he should have an easier time reaching and tearing the scales out of it to deal damage to the creature than he would have had with a single dagger, and if he managed to pick that one off the ground he could likely dig it deep into the horrible flesh underneath the scales.

Toppling seemed impossible at first glance and was tricky even once he realised that perhaps he could try with the trident.

As far as he could see he was completely outmatched. This was a hopeless fight, one that he would normally advise against and retreat from if the others somehow got into it. But Ignis was alone – with Ardyn behind him – and there were more Daemons closing in from the other streets.

“Make an example of it...”

Slowly but steadily the words seeped into his mind properly. Out in the wild, on hunts, they had never really paid attention to it. Daemons had ever been mindless and uncontrollable, predictable only in the sense that they would pile upon the nearest living being with the intent to kill. They usually acted like that, but he vaguely remembered the few instances they had come across Daemons that were clearly capable of thought, even if their thoughts were ruled by an insatiable desire for something that could never be theirs. The Daemon that had snatched Prompto that wanted to know what had happened to its children; the Daemon that had lured hunters in at night beside the Vesperpool.

Ardyn was one such Daemon by definition. But what separated Ardyn from those creatures was the fact that he controlled them. The Daemons here in Insomnia were more intelligent than those out in the wild. They were skilled at tracking, knew when to leave an opponent alone even if their instinct told them to tear the puny mortal into shreds and bathe in his blood.

An example.

The Accursed’s test was one of strength; whether Ignis was capable of showing the Daemons who was of a higher rank, who was stronger. Ardyn wanted to see if Ignis could intimidate Daemons – and the best way to do that was to take on the strongest of them.

He exhaled slowly. Just in time he looked back up.

He barely managed to avoid the set of claws hurled into his direction. The long, burnt lines that they drug through the asphalt made Ignis shudder, but he backed away slightly to avoid the claws returning to its owner. Ardyn, predictably enough, had vanished like the wind again.

“Come now, come now,” his voice sounded distant, and judging from the way it came, Ardyn was sitting on a pile of debris about a hundred metres or more away, “being on the defensive does so ill suit someone who betrayed kith and kin, country and king.”

He missed the ability to call upon fire at will. Even though he had only perfected infusing his daggers with magic, just a small flicker of flame would have been enough to make piercing the creature’s scales easier. Fire all but melted the scales, left nothing but the putrid weak skin and wretched flesh behind. Ignis shuddered before seeing if he could use the weight of the trident to his advantage – it was quite a lot heavier than Lucian-forged steel weapons. It suited the Oracle’s passive approach to combat, the bloodline’s general reliance upon their own magic; not exactly something that Ignis did.

Well, not any longer. He had been extensively trained in the art of combat, but something about the rush of using magic, the way it seemed to dance across that invisible connection he had with Noctis always made his heart beat faster. He’d almost always been assigned the role of resident mage, a dagger in one hand and a flask in the other. A trained combat mage needed to be quick on their toes, aware of their surroundings at any time; Crowe Altius had joked during one training session that Ignis might have made a better Glaive than Crownsguard.

Ignis took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. One-on-one against a Deathclaw.

That was absolutely suicidal.

Still he took a tentative step forwards, the trident still a foreign weight in his hands. It needed to become an extension of him just as his daggers were; not a sparring partner but a dancing partner that followed every step.

For a moment he thought he heard a whisper from the weapon.

He forced that thought out. He was likely imagining things because he had heard stories of what the ring still in his pockets was capable of, had a weapon that could be considered a royal arm in his hands. By the gods. He was wielding a royal arm like it was a toothpick.

He shuddered as he leapt towards the Deathclaw and tried to get around it. Unfortunately Deathclaws were rather agile despite their sheer size, far from clumsy and brute. Iron Giants they were not – Ignis already missed having people to fight alongside him.

Then again… its size was likely going to be its downfall. Ignis watched as it swung its claws, stepping out of the way and using the trident to fend off claws whenever they got too close to him. He was fast on his feet and marginally smaller than the Deathclaw – he’d watched Gladio miss swings on smaller enemies before. Normally Prompto with his gun was always there to plug any holes that that left. The Deathclaw was alone, no matter how many smaller Daemons were watching this fight as Ignis waited for an opening.

There was one attack that Deathclaws used that would leave it open to attacks. He dodged and blocked blows time and time again, marvelling at how sturdy the trident truly was. He had not touched royal arms much – sometimes, in the heat of battle, Noctis had tossed him one and he had used it. But back then he had been given the weapon by the Chosen. They had been cool in his hands even though Noctis used them.

The Trident of the Oracle was warm. It felt like it was _supposed_ to be cold like the other royal arms.

He rolled to the side, only to be brushed by a claw. He failed to get up, his mental exhaustion finally catching up to him. This was hopeless, utterly hopeless. There was blood running down his face – of course it had hit his head, that was the part that a Deathclaw generally went for in order to…

Daze its prey. It jumped backwards slightly, fixed on Ignis on the ground.

The next attack it would use was clearly that strange dark magic, a beam meant to instantly kill its prey, leave nothing but a mangled and burnt corpse. It wasn’t fire magic, but it wasn’t plain dark magic either; Ignis had seen that attack exactly twice in his life. Once when Prompto had been hit and when he had fallen while Gladio and Noctis had been busy with smaller fry. The second time had been a hunter trying to take on it all on her own, and she had died to that while the four of them had tried to rush in and keep the creature from doing that.

It would follow him easily, but Ignis was trained in two arts.

Ardyn had known exactly what he was doing when he handed Ignis the trident.

While nowhere near as impressive as Aranea Highwind, Ignis was skilled at high or long leaps to overpower opponents with the power of gravity. Aranea had commented on that with a grin when they were in Steyliff Grove with the imperial mercenary. She had said that it was interesting to see that there were Lucians not completely averse to Niff tactics; for the Niffs ruled the skies and therefore had to make the best use of it. At least they had until the MT project had been declared a success.

Ignis narrowed his eyes. His head was pounding, there was a scratch that went from his jaw nearly to his forehead – it had barely missed his eye, went across the bridge of his nose, and all of a sudden he was glad he was no longer wearing glasses. The Daemon was indeed inhaling, preparing for the blast of energy.

He had about a fraction of a second to do this correctly. He’d seen how fast they were. If he went too early the creature could still react – if he went too late he would be dead.

His hand around the trident was going numb from how tightly he gripped it. Then the Daemon made a slight movement, and Ignis begged the gods he had forsaken to let this go right. He jumped, not for the first time in his life.

The Daemon fired its attack.

It had missed him and did not see it. He put his weight onto the weapon as he came back down on its tail – many people thought his leaps impressive, though they were nothing compared to how swiftly Noctis warped or how wonderfully fierce Aranea sailed through the air with her part machine spear. But it did the trick.

The trident all but cleaved through the scales, even melted them away. This was the weapon of an Oracle. Ignis narrowed his eyes; this opened another opportunity for an attack.

The Deathclaw screeched as Ignis yanked the trident out, it whipped around only to be met with a heavy thrust right into its… for a lack of better word, chest. For a split second they were standing there, the trident embedded in the body of the Daemon and Ignis panting with blood dripping down his face. The melted scales had turned into the blotchy and inky substance that Daemons appeared from, the black blood mixing with it as it ran down the weapon.

The Deathclaw continued screeching, started thrashing around. Ignis barely even tried to dodge these blows; those were death throes. He yanked and stabbed as quickly as his body allowed him, and before long he stood in a black puddle on the ground. He’d won.

The Daemons around in the streets were making noise, chattering. There were claws scraping against asphalt, and Ignis was surprisingly tired. But still he rammed the butt of the weapon into the ground to demand silence; and the Daemons indeed went quieter.

“Anyone else?” He got no answer.

Behind him Ardyn was clapping as the Daemons ran away, scuttling off into the dark city.

“Outstanding! A bit on the hesitant side, but that finish was impressive!”

Ignis turned around to face the Accursed. He wobbled, however. He was exhausted, had barely eaten in the last few days and it was finally catching up to him. He was completely at his energy’s end once more, and a dull voice somewhere in the back of his head told him that all of this was his own fault. It was only right that he felt like this.

He fell forwards, but fortunately – or unfortunately – enough, Ardyn was there to break the fall. He caught the advisor with one arm as the Trident of the Oracle clanged on the ground; it had hit Ignis’ dagger as it fell. He had nearly forgotten about that. He watched blood drip onto the ground next to Ardyn’s boots.

The man said something, but Ignis had already passed out.

* * *

His hands were shaking. Normally he would have complained about being forced to eat something as plain as that, but even just a vaguely buttered toast had turned into the most divine food he had ever had in his life. Ardyn had handed that over once he awoke with the same infuriating grin and the even more infuriating explanation for it: “I forgot you mortals needed sustenance nearly every day.”

The Citadel was quiet, just as quiet as it had been the last few days. He’d been out for three days according to Ardyn, and now he was sitting in the middle of the entrance hall – on the ground, just like back when Noctis had decided that they were going to wait for King Regis to return that evening. Two children, the employees. The otherwise empty hall.

Now there was nothing here other than overturned tables, papers scattered around.

Ardyn was definitely having fun going over these. Most of them were complaints, some others were expenses on the peace treaty. Ardyn did not comment on any of these with words, but Ignis quickly learned that when the man snorted he had come across something he considered nonsensical. Generally expenses, reports on agriculture, status reports from the borders of the Wall. All things that King Regis had considered important, all things that Ignis had learned in excruciating detail. In order to support Noctis, he thought.

Now that he thought about it, Ignis had all but been taught things that a future ruler of Lucis needed to know. It was for the sake of being a good advisor, but slowly but steadily the realisation settled in that he had been raised as replacement prince. After all, Noctis had been born to die. In the wake of the end of the bloodline the people would need someone to smooth over the phase of where there was no government.

Ignis had been supposed to be that replacement, and he clenched his jaw as he sat there watching Ardyn all but bounce around from toppled paper stack to toppled paper stack.

Eventually the man stopped just around the time Ignis was going through all the times King Regis had asked him to summarise a situation for him even though the king was fully capable of doing that by himself. The Accursed kicked his weak leg against a toppled desk as he leaned over to sweep a piece of paper off the floor. For a long moment the place was silent again, and Ignis realised that Ardyn likely could read and speak every long dead language on Eos.

The man looked up from the paper. The expression he wore was unreadable but undeniably dark – there was something about his eyes that was completely unsettling Ignis as he finished chewing on this last piece of barely buttered bread.

“What,” he choked out eventually, “are you staring at me like that for?”

“Who would have thought that there were so many similarities?”

Ignis stood up slowly; he was still surprisingly tired and the deep scratch on his face stung like hell whenever he changed his expression too much. But still he grimaced at Ardyn. “I’m afraid I don’t quite follow.”

Ardyn merely handed him the papers. Ignis quickly looked over them – they looked at least semi-confidential and were addressed to King Regis. The date was just two days before they had left Insomnia, not even a week before the Crown City fell into imperial hands and the king lay dead in the Citadel.

A full report on Noctis’ condition was attached to it, surprisingly enough also dated the same. Ignis had always assumed that the last Scourge relapse test had been done just around the time Noctis was admitted to a public school in a suburb nearby. Yet there was data on Noctis; apparently that test had been done before he had turned 20. He looked at the next paper – he knew Noctis’ condition. The prince was fine, there was no danger of a relapse. The next sheet was a continuation of the report, and the doctor who had tested Noctis had added a note.

It said something about Noctis seemingly having developed a full resistance to the Scourge, one that could absolutely not be replicated no matter how much they tried in the lab. Ignis broke into cold sweat as he turned to the next paper.

It was labelled as highly confidential, even though it appeared to be no more than a checklist. A checklist on Ignis’ studies, to be precise. There was just a simple note at the end, written in a fine handprint that he had nearly forgotten. His own uncle’s handwriting.

_Fully trained to take over the country in the aftermath, emotionally stable._

His hands shook as he looked at the next page. It was just details about how far he had gotten in his studies – further than King Regis had – and how the populace would likely accept him. They adored the prince, but they also liked his advisor, for the two of them were rarely separated.

He dropped the papers and looked at Ardyn.

“Raised to be a replacement; a king not of royal blood but of _necessity._ How tragic.”

The world was turning all around him – there had been select people who had known what would happen. His uncle had been one of the people; his parents likely too. All of these people had known that Noctis would die, and not a single one ever deemed it necessary to tell Ignis. Was it to protect Noctis? Was it to protect them both? How selfish could their parents be?

He’d realised too late that Ardyn once more was in front of him, his hand under Ignis’ chin to make him look up at the man as he stood in front of Ignis. The hand was so much warmer than it had been before, but Ignis was also aware how cold he felt overall. Like someone had just shoved him into icy water for a rude awakening.

“What he would have never been you are destined to be, eh? That does remind me of… someone I once knew.”

Ignis held his breath. His thoughts were racing, unable to crystallise a question he wanted to ask. For a good few moments he and Ardyn were mere centimetres apart before he managed to choke out something.

“Y… what?”

Ardyn let go of his face and turned around, Ignis still staring at him. Then the man started walking, and Ignis scrambled to his feet to follow. Ignis had walked this route before countless times. Those steps were familiar, although the day he had left the city alongside Noctis was still burnt into his mind. How the sun had shone, how King Regis had looked at Noctis with such a desperate but loving expression that it made his stomach churn now that he knew the truth. All those lies, for better or worse. He nearly fell down the last few steps as he followed Ardyn, whose coat was trailing behind him. He took a turn right as they exited the Citadel, as walking past broken glass and what looked like dried blood as they passed a wreckage. The sun had only been up for about two hours today but it was nearly gone, barely more than a red line on the horizon. Day seven. Ignis knew that the sun would not rise again until Noctis sacrificed himself to take down the man he was following, and all he could do as he saw the last sliver of light vanish was hope Ardyn could not hear how loudly and rapidly his heart was beating.

Eventually the man stopped, and Ignis vaguely remembered the spot. They had been here before, but Ignis had passed out from exhaustion. He was overall in a terrible physical condition still, though Ardyn was undeniably skilled in treating wounds. Altissia, Zegnautus Keep, then Insomnia had simply been too much for him to take on all on his lonesome.

“Oh, Ardyn! When will you be back from your travels?” The man’s voice was clear and loud and Ignis flinched because there was an underlying tone of utter hatred as he spoke. “Ardyn, have you been skipping the meetings again? You’re so rarely in the city anyway, you’re not leaving a good impression, chosen by the Hexatheon or not! Ardyn, don’t be that mean to Gil, he’s right that you ought to rest! Ardyn! Ardyn, Ardyn, Ardyn. What have you become, what have you done?”

A dull kick echoed through the street as Ardyn’s foot connected with the monument built in honour of the Mystic.

Time seemed to stop moving as the Accursed stood before the monument with his back to Ignis. It was a peculiarly familiar scene – Noctis often did the same whenever the topic came to his fathers and all the little things he seemed to keep from his son. Only when it was the two of them together Noctis let down the walls he had built around himself and started ranting at Ignis. The burden of royalty was a heavy one, but Ignis always reassured him that he would make a fantastic king. Eventually, once they were past the awkward stage back when they had been teenagers and ceased getting along as well as they had when they had been children, Noctis had started believing him. Had said that he wanted to be a good king, even if it terrified him.

Ignis always just replied to that with a laugh and a peck on the prince’s cheek. He knew he would, he always said, and Noctis laughed back.

Nobody was laughing now. He was fairly certain that Ardyn was shaking where he stood. A cracking sound echoed through the street as Ardyn kicked the monument again with more force than Ignis thought possible – though that had not been the crack of bone. Ignis knew that sound better than most other sounds; that had more sounded like stone cracking than bones breaking.

Yet Ardyn’s voice was impossibly smooth when he started speaking again. “I had thought the practice of raising replacement kings over, but alas, I was mistaken. Perhaps you could have been a replacement chosen, much like dear Somnus here was.”

“… ‘Dear’ Somnus?”

Ardyn turned around, a most vile smile on his face. It was sweet, it looked like a sincere smile. But it did not reach his eyes; those were blazing with a hatred that Ignis had never before seen in his life. It made him recoil as Ardyn nailed him with that horrible gaze.

“Replacement king Ignis Scientia, meet the replacement king Somnus Lucis Caelum. My _beloved_ little brother.”

It took a few seconds for the statement to reach his brain proper. Ignis blinked. “Your… brother. The founding king did not have a brother.”

A splitting pain shot through his head. He had encountered this phenomenon when he had found Lunafreya’s dog Pryna dying at the altar after Ravus had run off to find his sister. It had followed him through Zegnautus Keep as he tried to find his way to the Crystal. But instead of vague words telling him about a past forgotten and a future set in stone, all he heard was shrill screeching. Ignis covered his ears with a groan and shook his head; the horrible noise did not cease, did not give way to yet another horrifying vision of what was to come or what had already come to pass. No stories about Ardyn and the reason he had become what he was, no threatening images that would haunt him until the day he died of Noctis pinned to the throne by his own father’s sword with the Ring of the Lucii gleaming on his hand.

It was loud, it was intrusive, it made him nauseous. Ignis dropped to his knees in the middle of the deserted street, his fingers digging into his head in a desperate attempt to get the noise out of his ears.

Eventually the screeching subsided after what felt like an eternity. His head was about to split, he was fairly certain there were tears streaming down his face from the sudden and intense pain. It was pathetic, really, and the cut across his face stung like hell as he sat there clutching his own head.

It definitely looked like Ardyn was about to say something, but Ignis bent over. Unfortunately it seemed that his stomach completely disagreed with what he had been given and what he had been put through.

The Accursed and the Daemons around the street silently watched as the Chosen King’s former advisor and supposed replacement sobbed between waves of nausea.

* * *

The sun did not rise again the next day. Or the day after. Somehow, Ignis thought it was alright. It meant Noctis was alive.

He’d come to dread the dawn – Ignis had always loved the night more. The stars had always been a special interest of his, but he couldn’t even find the energy to mourn them as he recovered properly, slowly eating out of a can he’d found in a kitchen around the Citadel. He’d always preferred watching the night sky with Noctis anyway.

Night meant that Noctis was alive.

That was all he really wanted.


	7. REPLACEMENT

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> don't you love the smell of "entire chunks of the characterisation and later plot depend on this but theres a 100% chance content that is yet to be released will completely and utterly destroy this"?
> 
> i don't.  
> but i gotta roll with it. just don't sue me when episode ardyn comes along and utterly CRUSHES whatever i wrote in here

“Perhaps you ought to think your trips through the city through a little more.”

Ignis did not reply as he went limp leaning into his arm and against his shoulder. Not that Ardyn cared – the young man had danced almost exactly as Ardyn wanted him to, which was impressive, all things considered.

* * *

At first he had tried not to think about it too much.

Exile was not something he had expected, considering how wrathful Somnus could be when he was in a bad mood. That was a character trait they both shared, being brothers and all. Being exiled he was technically free from the burden of royalty, the burden of healing the masses.

He realised too late that he was far, far gone the _moment_ he started thinking of the people he had healed as burden. He’d set out with the hopeful naivety that everything was going to be fine. He could help the people, and back at home he would have his other supporters. A united kingdom, a kingdom they would call Lucis – that was what the Hexatheon promised him. He wandered the earth, befriended a warrior-in-training, made him his bodyguard.

Back at home his brother started befriending a woman with blonde hair and a smile so radiant that people whispered that she was sent by the gods. She was from the other continent and lived in a small settlement near a hill of Sylleblossoms. It wasn’t until Ardyn came across the Archaean in his travels that he realised he definitely was not the only mortal who the gods spoke to. He returned to the capital that same year, just at around the time that woman left.

They called her Oracle and she communed with the gods. Somnus got surprisingly defensive when asked about what her purpose had been.

Once he had settled into exile, he had started to realise things. That woman had known all along that Ardyn Lucis Caelum of the Izunia family was on a fool’s errand that would only end in pain and grief, in horrible waves of pain making every single cell in his body revolt when he put a hand on the Crystal. She had known and told his brother. And suddenly the younger, the one who would never sit the throne, had a feasible way of becoming king legitimately without trying to assassinate his older brother.

He heard of Somnus’ exploits. How he travelled with the Oracle, how they lessened the pain of the masses.

Ardyn decided to cling to the small comfort that Somnus was obviously copying what he had done. Somnus would fall to the same things that Ardyn had fallen to, and once whoever else wanted the throne expelled his younger brother he would get his revenge.

It never happened.

The moment Shiva appeared before him and laid out the prophecy for him, something inside him snapped.

At first he wanted to prove the gods wrong. He was mortal, he would scream, he could still die if they would just _let him._ But no matter how many times he tried, no matter how many times he smashed every bone in his body, no matter how many times he picked fights he could not win to get torn into pieces, no matter how many times he starved himself… Shiva would always stand at the gate, shake her head slowly and solemnly and turn him away. Her words were always the same.

“I cannot let you pass, not yet. Not while this maelstrom still resides within you.”

They truly did expect him to wait patiently until one of his own blood with the power to purge darkness was born; a Chosen with the power to expel their former Chosen.

Ardyn wasn’t going to play along with that.

Instead he took to travelling the world again instead of waiting in his exile – Somnus was long dead, his nephew whose name he never learned was long dead, and his nephew’s son, and that person’s twins, and so on. He’d been considered a Daemon by the populace, something so incredibly wicked that even succumbing to the vanishing sickness – the fools had no idea that Daemons were the once afflicted – sounded like less of a danger than having Ardyn take care of them. Instead of honing his skills in the healing arts he let the power rot away, took up studying various herbal remedies instead. He waited until his power had rotted away enough before he turned to the horrible power he had accumulated within him as he healed the afflicted, watched with utter glee how the darkness bent to his will. He even went as far as tormenting people for fun – they had tormented him in the past. The sins of the fathers carried over to be the sins of the children as far as he was concerned. Nearly causing a young girl who they called Oracle a heart attack and tearing her older, marginally less powerful sister into pieces when she resisted had to have been the most fun he had in years.

Sometimes his clarity returned to him, painfully sharp moments of his own voice begging him to _stop_ and wait until the Chosen was born, to let that Chosen do everything he needed to do without resisting him.

Ardyn definitely wasn’t going to let him. No, he was going to put up a fight, no matter how bad his death wish became after three hundred of years of solitude. He started beating Daemons into submission until they followed his orders. He brought devastation with him wherever he went, anything to make the accursed Hexatheon bring their Chosen into the world faster.

Instead they started calling him the Accursed.

He realised when that name popped up how Somnus had completely erased his older brother from existence. The Draconian held power over the Crystal; the Crystal’s power was immeasurable by even divine standards. It had been born with the planet after all.

The gods had used that to erase him from history, to make certain that none remembered him and none could pass on his memory. It was him, the forgotten king they only called Accursed, versus history altered by the gods themselves. The people remembered the replacement king, revered him for his services together with the Oracle.

He hadn’t thought about it in years, centuries even. He’d been fully consumed by making certain the world’s leaders were in his hands, manipulating Niflheim from the beginning of the war until the very moment that Insomnia fell. Everything the emperor did afterwards had been his rather severe case of Scourge infection speaking, and it had chosen to hunt down the wayward and uncrowned King of Lucis while attempting to fortify the empire even further.

But now that he was staring at those lines, he could almost _see_ Somnus standing before him again, that neutral expression of his on his face as he spoke Ardyn’s sentence. The way he drove that dagger into his back and told him to go and die in solitude. The way those who supported Ardyn still were rounded up and locked away. All those names he had thought long forgotten were popping up in his head again as he read over how one Ignis S. Scientia was supposedly in perfect mental and physical condition to take over the country once the Lucis Caelum heir died to save the world.

The gods had likely promised his brother the throne and glory, both things that the otherwise intelligent young man had been starved for.

But as he finished reading over those files and looked at one of the two subjects talked about in them he wanted to start laughing. Very desperately wanted to start laughing.

All he really did was make the supposed second replacement king of Lucis uncomfortable.

“What are you staring at me like that for?”

He’d patched Ignis up after his bout with the Deathclaw. Though the reports mentioned him as healthy and mentally stable, the last thing Ardyn needed right now was someone with an infected wound – or worse, an early onset of Starscourge. It was undeniable that Ignis would eventually contract it, though he definitely did not seem like a person who would give into it easily. Perhaps out of spite or devotion. Spite against Ardyn; twisted devotion for Noctis. Love could be so hilariously cruel.

Still, as the young man looked at him like that, Ardyn was uncomfortably reminded of his own brother when they had been younger. Somnus had ever looked up to him until one day that childish admiration had been gone. It was simply the effect of time, the two of them growing older taking effect, but those narrowed eyes and the confused expression looked like he was staring at a reincarnation of his brother again. As if Noctis had not been infuriating enough.

“Who would have thought that there were so many similarities?”

Ignis got up, the frown on his face not managing to hide the short flare of pain as he scrunched up his nose. “I’m afraid I don’t quite follow.”

He wordlessly handed the files over to the advisor and watched how his expression slowly derailed once he hit the sheets that talked about his progress and his impeccable ability to take over the country once Noctis, the Accursed and the Scourge were gone.

Once he dropped the papers, Ardyn shrugged. “Raised to be a replacement; a king not of royal blood but of _necessity._ How tragic.”

Ignis did not react and Ardyn took that moment to check one more thing. He walked up to the infinitely younger man, forced him to look at the Accursed. Though he was very obviously in distress he held Ardyn’s gaze with almost steely resolve; the walls he had built around him were not cracked and still strong. Even though there was this nasty gash across his face he still looked positively royal, dishevelled hair and lack of glasses or not.

“What he would have never been you are destined to be, eh?” The advisor still stared back at him unmoving, and Ardyn swore if he squinted he would see a familiar face staring back at him. “That does remind me of...” Somnus, the younger brother he once loved more than even the subjects he had been destined to rule; Somnus, the younger brother he hated so much it physically hurt. “… someone I once knew.”

He dropped his arm and turned around almost immediately. Something was beckoning him out to the streets, back to the monument that bore his brother’s name.

Ardyn had long stopped wondering where the hell those impulses came from. They were erratic and fickle just as the Scourge itself was, and part of him knew that it was his own bitter hatred amplified by the sickness he had once set out to cure. Ignis hesitated for a moment before following him – the man definitely did not act as if he had bent a royal arm to his will and defeated a Daemon that had been under Ardyn’s control for no less than a thousand years. It was like leading a lost puppy around, and in a sense Ignis was exactly that. A lost puppy that had bitten its previous owner’s heels and was planning on doing so again.

Probably.

He came to a sudden halt in front of the monument, barely even remembering how he had gotten here. Just the name was enough to incite enough rage in him to blow it to pieces, but at the same time he recalled a distant voice. Just distant enough that it hurt; for with it came memories he had long since buried. Two thousand years were not kind to mortal memory, after all.

“Oh, Ardyn! When will you be back from your travels?” Were he not on the verge of hysteria, Ardyn would have realised that he was all but spitting these words out. “Ardyn, have you been skipping the meetings again? You’re so rarely in the city anyway, you’re not leaving a good impression, chosen by the Hexatheon or not! Ardyn, don’t be that mean to Gil, he’s right that you ought to rest! Ardyn! Ardyn, Ardyn, Ardyn. What have you become, what have you done?”

They decried him as a monster. Tore those who remained at his side away from him, made them suffer in his stead as his own flesh and blood buried a knife in his back. He still carried that thing with all its haunted memories – it had taken the life of Oracle Lunafreya Nox Fleuret after all. It had hung over Noctis Lucis Caelum’s throat, it had made the man standing behind him thrash in panic and _scream_ the name of the Chosen with such raw, unfiltered fear that Ardyn wondered if those two were not more involved than just childhood friends turned liege and advisor.

Ardyn decided to vent his frustrations. He kicked the monument that bore his brother’s name, and nothing but silence remained after that. He was still not satisfied, was still angry.

He kicked it again, this time with enough force to crack the stone. He was the Accursed; he was a Daemon. Daemons were stronger than humans, even though his ankle definitely snapped there. But Ardyn no longer truly felt pain and non-fatal injuries would heal within mere hours anyway; he didn’t really care. His brother, the first replacement.

Behind him stood the supposed second replacement.

“I had thought the practice of raising replacement kings over, but alas, I was mistaken. Perhaps you could have been a replacement chosen, much like dear Somnus here was.”

“… ‘Dear’ Somnus?”

Something unhinged. He turned around with a bright smile, his hatred flaring anew within him. Ignis recoiled. Good.

“Replacement king Ignis Scientia, meet the replacement king Somnus Lucis Caelum. My _beloved_ little brother.” He made certain to spit the last words out with as much hatred as he could muster. It definitely did not match the actual searing, blinding and white-hot rage that was boiling up inside him.

The advisor blinked. He had excelled at history, so Ardyn knew what was coming. He had been erased and forgotten, after all, and Ignis likely did not forget about royal history. “Your… brother. The founding king did not have a brother.”

Ardyn was about to say that history only ever remembered the victors, and in the Mystic’s case it had been him who had twisted it into his favour with the help of the gods and the Crystal, the Ring of the Lucii. All things that had once upon a time been promised to Ardyn, all things that had been taken from him alongside his status as human being.

But he never got to say anything. Ignis raised his hands to his head, covered his ears.

Just like in Zegnautus Keep he was likely beset by a vision, but something about this seemed off. He could only watch as the advisor collapsed to his knees, on the verge of tears. Could only watch as the man hacked up what little he had eaten.

* * *

“E-Excuse me?”

Darkness had fallen and Ardyn had to admit he had not felt this good in ages. He was completely in his element, which he had not been since the days he barely remembered, somewhere out in the countryside on the back of the Chocobo he had raised, his companion lagging behind asking him to slow down because they still had a long way ahead of them. Still, much like the rest of humanity there was some planning to be done. Ardyn had made certain that the Daemons attacked, occasionally killed, but never enough that those who were building walls around Lestallum would lack enough manpower to survive. With the Ring of the Lucii still missing the Chosen simply was not able to use the Crystal they had carted back to Lestallum. At least for the time being it would ward off enough Daemons to let humanity fortify.

Said plans involved doing something with his unexpected new companion now that he was no longer on the verge of collapsing from mental strain and physical exhaustion at any given time. Ignis lacked the ability to see in the dark properly much like any mortal, but it hardly stopped him. A month of darkness and nothing much happened except for him training in front of the Citadel every so often. The Trident of the Oracle and his remaining dagger were like an extension of his arms by now. Ardyn quite enjoyed seeing him come down to normal, especially since Somnus had used a similar tactic when he fought. Elementally infused weapons.

Thankfully enough the similarities stopped there. Two replacement kings, two men supposed to be dutiful slaves to destiny. But where Somnus had complied, had gone with what the gods demanded of him, Ignis held his head high and did the exact opposite. Went with the Accursed. Defeated an opponent despite overwhelming odds.

Ardyn had just casually suggested it, but it had ruined Ignis’ concentration on the tinned food he had been slowly eating.

“And here I thought subjects were supposed to listen when their king spoke.”

Ignis blinked and put his fork down. “No, I… I heard you loud and clear, I was just…”

“Taken aback at the suggestion, appalled perhaps?”

All the advisor did was sigh and shake his head, and Ardyn let out a laugh. He had to admit Ignis was a much more interesting person than Besithia and Aldercapt had been once they had started to get their hands on the things they wanted. Besithia in general had been vaguely unsettling once Ardyn revealed techniques on how to harness plasmodium to him; Aldercapt himself had gone from frankly boring and bland but caring to uncaring, selfish and jealous of Lucis’ power. Ignis however remained almost entirely the same even when offered something that most humans could not exactly turn away.

Power.

Specifically a power to control something that he had spent a good time hunting, control over something that had hurt him and his former friends countless times. All those reports.

“Either way, my suggestion still stands. You’ve intimidated the Daemons and shown you are higher on the food chain than them. The logical next step is learning how to control them, make them dance to your will.”

Truth be told, he was mostly messing around. There was absolutely no guarantee that the Daemons would bend to Ignis’ will – but Ardyn was willing to test that as long as the advisor played along. He was a useful tool, but a tool that could fight with those he had subjugated would be even better.

Naturally it did not work the way he intended. The Daemons respected Ignis’ strength, yes, but they rarely did as he told them to. Only the weakest did out of fear, and it definitely frustrated the advisor to no end. He had lost his access to the Armiger, he had lost the ability to use magic. He had been stripped of two very important things and he was desperate to fill that hole in his abilities. But even with Ardyn sitting on the debris nearby the Daemons refused to do as he told them. A week passed like that, Ignis growing more and more frustrated while Ardyn remained entertained at the very least.

Eventually he resorted to using his dagger to threaten an Ariadne. The creature itself remained unimpressed outside of leaving the premise, and Ignis let out a frustrated growl.

Ardyn himself choked back laughter.

* * *

The ball of fire missed him by a few inches. Granted, it had not been sent at him – the Glaives fighting up ahead had no idea he was simply standing there behind a nearby tree. The spell they had flung had missed the Daemon he had sent to mess with them, however.

Lestallum was impressive for a settlement they had fortified in three months. It was bright and he felt the Crystal within it, felt the Chosen and the remaining blood of the Oracle. It was a last bastion and these Glaives were doing something that Ardyn had thought impossible. But as usual Lunafreya had messed up his deck; he had not counted on people being able to use magic. It added more in favour of humanity, he noted with a grim smile as he stepped away from the tree and left the Daemons to fend for themselves.

Wildlife was rapidly decreasing even though it had not been too long ago that light had vanished. The Scourge was starting to run rampantly unchecked across the countryside, infected the animals and turned them hostile. Plants were withering and dying left and right, even centuries-old trees were wilting away slowly but steadily. Soon nothing but dead wood would remain.

The people of Lestallum had brought as much uninfected cattle as they could. There was an entire section of the city dedicated to housing animals of all kinds, most of all Chocobos from what he had seen.

Humanity was not going to go out on a whimper at the very least.

* * *

“Catch.”

At least Ignis’ reaction speed was still as inhumanely fast as it had been when he had set out from Insomnia. Ardyn noted that after a while the obvious frustration had faded and Ignis once more had cloaked himself in the almost princely composure he usually held up around him. It reminded him of the day he had walked into the throne room in the Citadel with King Regis sitting the throne. The man had his slip-ups; the way he had taken offence to Ardyn saying he had come bearing terms of peace. The way Regis had said the word “peace” had nearly sent Ardyn into a hysteric fit – Niflheim’s grasp on Lucis was getting stronger and stronger and every single person in the room had known that, most of all the king.

But after that he had nearly immediately regained his composure and let Ardyn continue laying out what the empire offered.

Ignis caught the knife with little effort, turned it around to look it over. He’d been maintaining his own one for the time being, and Ardyn acted mostly on a whim.

“Your knife.”

“Observant as always, I see.”

“I’ve no need for your sarcasm. What am I supposed to do with this? It seems fairly well-maintained; you do have a different reason for tossing this at me.”

Ever since he had remembered him, Ardyn had started to realise that Ignis shared a lot of similarities with his former protector and partner Gilgamesh. The man had been one of the people who had been severely punished for still standing beside him despite him being decried a Daemon and Ardyn had never seen him again after that, but Ignis and he shared a streak of almost endearing obliviousness sometimes. Though in Ignis’ case that likely came from having served the royal family almost all his life and having little to no idea what to do with Ardyn who acted so very little like the royal he was supposed to be. Gilgamesh himself had just not really ventured out of his small village of warriors before he somehow wound up serving Ardyn after the healer saved his life.

The fact that they were both rather blunt when the need arose was familiar, at least.

“And on the danger of repeating myself; observant as always.”

This particular knife had history, not that Ardyn was going to tell Ignis about it. It had been the knife his brother had used to draw blood after the Crystal had rejected Ardyn so violently. It was the very reason why people saw he bled black like a Daemon now, it had been buried in his back as they dragged away his supporters to do whatever it was they had done to them. It was the weapon he had held for years, a weapon he had repeatedly first rammed into himself in his desperate attempts to force the gods to let him _die._ Then it had become a constant companion of his until finally it once more drew blood at the Altar of the Tidemother in Altissia. Even bleeding the Oracle had continued to uphold her oath to the world, to the Chosen in particular.

Ignis was eyeing the weapon carefully. He had no idea it was what had caused the ultimately fatal wound on the Oracle. Then he narrowed his eyes and seemingly considered tossing it back at Ardyn. He did not doubt for a second that Ignis could nail him squarely in the forehead with it.

“That’s the weapon you played with at the Altar of the Tidemother.”

The weapon Ardyn had nearly rammed into Noctis’ throat.

“Indeed I did.”

Ignis frowned. “Pray tell then, what am I supposed to do with it?”

Ardyn leaned forwards a little. “Tell me, are you hanging onto that knife of yours out of sentimentality?”

The advisor put the knife on the table next to his own. He remained quiet, his eyes locked onto the two weapons. The Trident of the Oracle was leaning against the wall of the room in the Citadel they were sitting in right now, but for a moment it seemed like Ignis only had eyes for both those knives. He had been trained with them, after all, likely remembered the way the elements danced over the weapons as they bent to his will. It was like an addiction, Ardyn knew. People with a talent for Elemancy were easy to control as long as they could continue using this power. They swore fealty to men and women they hated for a chance to continue using it, to see the elements bend to their will.

“… No. It was the most logical to take with me. I’ve had it the longest, yes, but I know exactly where its strengths lie. Easy to throw, easy to find again after a throw. Strong enough to get through most things other than heavy armour and thick scales.”

“My, my. Well then, consider this one a token of my _appreciation._ It ought to complement your little _memento_ there nicely, considering that the one who forged it called it _mori.”_

At least Ignis caught the underhanded threat. He narrowed his eyes at Ardyn for a moment, obviously considering refusing him plainly or throwing the knife back at him. Ardyn did not have to be aware of his own mortality any longer – Ignis on the other hand definitely had to consider it. It was _delightful_ to see the man scrunching up his nose as he stared at this unassuming little knife.

He wound up taking it in the end, put it on his belt beside his own.

* * *

“I have a question.”

Half a year into darkness, and Lestallum was properly fortified. Nothing short of the strongest Daemons that Ardyn did not unleash willy-nilly would be able to break through the walls and even then the bright light would make it extremely hard for the Daemons to fight. Ardyn had just returned from one such trip where he stayed out of sight, in a group of vaguely human-shaped Daemons, though the one that had been Emperor Aldercapt quickly got on his nerves. Ignis had been roaming the streets he once knew again and they had run into each other in a rather unassuming street. Why on earth the advisor had been here Ardyn would never know, but it was likely related to the bundle he was carrying now.

Clothes, likely. Perhaps he’d lived nearby and had decided to get replacement clothes for the one he had torn in a skirmish with Daemons that had gotten cocky the other day. At least he managed to assert his superiority consistently; other humans who had attempted the same had gotten worn down or gotten too careless and wound up torn apart by the creatures in the past.

“Then ask.”

Calm and collected – it was infuriating how icy the advisor was now that his system was no longer in shock and strained under the betrayal he had committed willingly. Still, for a split second the young man looked nervous.

“You are of royal blood. Control over the Crystal or not there are… certain powers you have. Certain powers you _ought to_ be able to share with someone else. Daemons do not need them; they rarely use weapons and have their own twisted take on it.”

Ardyn crossed his arms.

“Careful, Ignis. Look too deep into the abyss and it might swallow you whole in the end.”

The advisor shot Ardyn an almost uncharacteristic smirk.

“Who is to say I might not be the danger the abyss itself never expected?”


	8. In light of your recent accomplishments, wouldn't you say you deserve a little more than that?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> JUST ONE THING
> 
> a great bit thank you to everyone who's said they've been enjoying this one so far! it means a lot to me!!! ;v;
> 
> without further ado,

He remembered that day rather well, all things considered. Noctis had very quickly displayed a hand for magic as soon as he had recovered and his night terrors had gotten less intense. Ignis had taken to sleeping at the Citadel in an unused room after Noctis’ accident. He almost vehemently had insisted on having sworn to ever remain at Noctis’ side, and he was fairly certain that King Regis had fought off tears when he said that accompanied by a very uncharacteristic stomp. So many people had tried to goad Ignis back into going home with his uncle, to stay the weekends with his parents closer to the civilian areas of Insomnia than the royal and royal servants districts.

It seemed only natural that after a night of lying beside Noctis and hearing him cry in fear, Ignis was the one to approach the king about the necessary training in controlling the powers that being a Lucis Caelum entailed.

People joked about Ignis’ dedication being this most dangerous weapon, something that was scarier than even a fully trained Shield of the King (not that Lord Clarus took to that kindly). Where Gladio was trained to protect, Ignis made a point in learning how to nurture as well as torture other people as time passed. Anything for Noctis.

But that day a child with an almost comical bedhead glared down the king of Lucis with a determination cold enough to freeze over the Infernian. He repeated that he was serious and that he was both fully aware of the dangers and willing to deal with them as they arose. Noctis needed someone to train with, to see if he could do what King Regis had learned much later.

It was his uncle who eventually convinced the king that whatever Ignis set his mind on he would dutifully fulfill – not that King Regis did not know that.

He remembered how Noctis and he had stood there shoulder to shoulder, how the younger had grabbed Ignis’ hand and whispered that he was still scared.

He licked his dry lips as he stared down the Accursed, a man of the same bloodline as the person he had sworn his life to, the person he loved so much that he had deliberately broken his trust.

Then he cracked a grin.

“Who is to say I might not be the danger the abyss itself never expected?”

Ardyn had to have heard about him, and if not that he had to have read all about him and his skills by now, given that all documents were scattered throughout the Citadel. There was no point in trying to reorder these, but sometimes Ignis stopped to do so out of habit. But every time he did so he started thinking back to doing the same with Noctis by his side, back in the prince’s apartment, in his own room back at home and in the Citadel. All those people who had likely known that he would one day lead the country into a new era, an era without kings, without queens, without magical walls.

It infuriated him; for a terrifying second he realised that he was starting to develop a deep sense of hatred for all the people involved in keeping this secret from him. He’d gone so long without people other than Ardyn that he was starting to enjoy the man’s company, even though it was so very, very clear that a deep and unchecked hatred ran somewhere through the almost casual exterior.

That hatred was starting to rub off on him.

“And pray tell, why on earth should I do as you ask of me?” Ardyn answered Ignis’ smirk with a grin of his own.

Just good that Ignis usually brought a gun to a knife fight. Or in this case, clearly remembered everything Ardyn had said and done in the last few months.

“You brought it up yourself. You said I could obtain the power to control the Daemons that lurk in the darkness at my behest. Made me try it to no avail.”

Ardyn narrowed his eyes. “How exactly does that relate to you all but _begging_ me to share my powers with you?

“Ah, I’ve not yet gone as low as to _beg,_ Your Majesty. But perhaps you could come to the same conclusion as I if you but thought about it for a second.”

This was an incredibly dangerous game to play, but Ignis had to bite his tongue to not immediately start laughing when Ardyn’s expression went completely blank for a second. He offered Ardyn a small smile but bowed his head anyway.

“What I mean to say is; while they do accept me as physically superior to them they do not seem to accept me as one of theirs. Or rather, one of yours.”

It was extremely reckless. Ignis definitely remembered the nausea, the way he and Noctis had both been miserable for days on end because neither of them were experienced with the powers granted to the royals of Lucis. But once that had subsided, he had felt that connection between them, a bond that only death could break – or Noctis himself, though he had once sworn he would never. Before his engagement to Lunafreya through the terms of the peace treaty Noctis had even joked that nothing but death would part him and Ignis.

He knew that _anyone_ of the bloodline could use that power. Hells, he had seen Ardyn use it rarely. Ignis knew for a fact that Ardyn could if he just wanted to; all he needed was some coaxing. Accursed or not, Ignis was playing a very dangerous game. Still, he kept the bow, tried to wipe the smile off his face and retain the calm and collected expression.

“As you certainly know by now, I’ve been schooled in a great many things to date. I am fully aware that there is another way to make these creatures listen to my commands when you are not on the field, but I would prefer not having to subject myself to the Scourge. Which leaves only one thing, really.”

“The power of kings.”

“Precisely. I can fight well enough without it, but it would make a fight against overwhelming odds easier – surely you would not want to waste an advantage like having me on your side like that, Your Majesty.”

“Ah? An advantage?”

Ardyn was definitely messing around. Still, Ignis held the man’s very amused gaze with a rigid expression.

“Knowing Noctis… he likely assumes that I am under your control somehow. That I had my wits tortured out of me, that I was brainwashed. That is an advantage that you cannot simply overlook. But in order to use it, I will need what you joked about – the power to command Daemons. Enough power to make them bend to my will.”

For a good few minutes they stared at one another in silence; Ardyn’s brows furrowed as he stood there deep in thought. Ignis caught that bright yellow flash that shone in his eyes for a second and fought back a shudder.

“Very well. But making demands of royalty… I cannot give you what you need before you prove yourself strong enough to deal with what will be thrown at you.”

“So be it. What is it that you want me to do?”

The man leaned forward with a grin, once again bringing their faces way too close for comfort. For a terrifying second Ignis feared that he would have to hunt down his friends – his former friends.

“Bring me proof that you triumphed over the Blademaster.”

* * *

He hadn’t been aware of the almost catastrophic effect that the dark had on Lucis and Eos until he left Insomnia. Ignis had left the city brimming with determination, but as soon as he saw what had happened to the world outside of it he almost wanted to turn back and forget about it. The city was in ruins – and the world outside did not fare much better.

All things considered, he should have expected as much. He had learned in almost excruciating detail how the ecosystems across Eos worked, how the death of the Glacian had negatively affected Niflheim and wiped out a good assortment of things that the country had had in abundance beforehand. Niflheim was punished for their hubris, but the rest of Eos was also left with having to deal with what the darkness and the Scourge would ravage.

He drove in the dark. Refused to use the lights. It only made sense, considering that people had likely branded him traitor in Lestallum or he was to be caught and brought to Noctis so they could reverse his supposed brainwashing if Noctis actually believed in that. Ignis knew that Noctis likely assumed something like that.

After all, none knew the Chosen better than his advisor.

He put his head against the steering wheel. Gladio had talked about the Blademaster and Ignis had a vague enough idea where to look for that supposed entry to the Proving Grounds. There weren’t many places that matched the Shield’s description, after all. Once he’d found that, he would likely be met with resistance. At the very least he knew that the Daemons that once resided in the place had left by now, or would not bar his way. No Daemon ever did, no matter how ancient it supposedly was. The spirits repossessing their discarded bodies, however…

There was something that Ardyn had deliberately left out. Ignis was not an idiot, and he knew once people – especially those of the Lucis Caelum bloodline – started to avoid something. He had asked the man why the Blademaster in particular. Ardyn had joked about perhaps making Ignis his Shield, but there was something left unspoken. Considering that the Blademaster had been around some odd 2,000 years it was rather easy to connect the dots to some degree.

Either Gilgamesh had been Ardyn’s protector in the past or he had been that of Somnus Lucis Caelum; either way, the Blademaster was going to suffer the Accursed’s spite and wrath at long last. How he had gone for two thousand years without ever checking the place Ignis would likely never know, but he was not too keen on knowing to begin with. He had admit he was curious but he was not stupid enough to toss his own safety out of the window for some knowledge. He wasn’t supposed to ask questions – a Shield was to follow orders.

Just the mere thought of this sent cold shivers down his spine as he looked at the far horizon. Somewhere in the distance there was a light; a haven likely in use by hunters or Glaives. That was why he drove without light, since if he could see their campfire they would have easily seen his vehicle’s lights. It wasn’t like he truly needed light to see, anyway.

It wasn’t absolutely dark, after all. It was unnatural, seething, but even without light humans at least had a vague idea where to go. The true danger of the dark was the fact that Daemons could pop up just about anywhere except for havens and places with bright light.

The countryside was empty and colourless; the trees were dying and the grass was long dead. It was cold, colder than he anticipated. But such was the world without the sun.

By the time he was close to where he suspected the Proving Grounds, he had to dive behind a rock formation.

Hunters, all the way out here?

“Hey, did you hear that? That couldn’t have been a Daemon, right?”

The hunters were a pair of middle-aged women, the one he assumed to be younger pointing her light into his vague direction.

“Doesn’t matter, as long as it isn’t another pack of Daemons we’re good.”

“What if it’s a wild Chocobo?”

“Are you dumb? All the way out here, where there’s literally nothing but rocks? A wild Chocobo would’ve long migrated to where at least some dead shrubbery remains, they can live off that for a long while. If you wanna find a Chocobo, go look in a dead forest. But we’re not here for that.”

They left rather quickly after not finding anything or anyone around and after making certain there were no Daemons waiting to ambush them.

* * *

In a world where the wind still blew naturally, Ignis figured that this would have been rather impressive and haunting. He stared down into the canyon, fully aware that if something were to startle him now he would likely take a step forward and plummet to his untimely demise. Every step of his echoed through the caverns, through the canyon. Every single rock he hit made a noise so loud it sounded as if an entire rockslide was about to take place.

But the system of tunnels and caverns remained silent otherwise, unmoving just as the world above did. Ignis brushed past torn cloth and rusty armours pinned to the walls with swords, past skeletons and discarded weapons they seemingly clutched even in death. The silence was heavy, choking almost as his fingers trailed over a deep fissure in the rock – had it been Gladio who had left that there, his sword leaving that deep a cleft in solid rock? Had it been Cor thirty years ago?

The torn cloth bore the old sigils associated with the royal family of Lucis. Colourful banners hung still in the caves and once more Ignis figured that this place would have been very intimidating if only the wind blew. This did not seem like a desolate place meant to test one’s might and leave the unworthy dead; the more he walked the more he started to realise that this looked an eerie lot like a small town chiselled into the stone and forgotten by time. The realisation weighed heavy on his mind as he peeked around a corner and looked ahead. It was a naturally occurring formation, but the fact that it looked like a bridge bearing the heavy marks of past fights made the breath catch in Ignis’ throat. Finally he understood what Gladio had meant with this place being all-around intimidating when he had not been fighting for his life – this seemed to connect to a trial chamber.

Alas, even as he set foot on the bridge nothing happened. No strange creature that seemed to be half bird half Daemon, heavily armoured and obviously having been tame once upon a time, attacked him and barred him from continuing his solitary and silent path. None of the discarded bodies that looked like they were made of half-rotted flesh barely clinging to bone suddenly rose to attack him and test his powers. The Trident of the Oracle remained strapped to his back, unused; none of the daggers ever left his belt. His only companions were the silence and the half-remembered retelling of the battles that Gladio had fought in here. He stared at the walls that looked like something had spewed acid on it, vaguely recalling that Gladio and Cor had fought a subspecies of what hunters called Demon Walls here, stared at the strange scorch marks that he identified as a subspecies of Iron Giant using their strange gravity pull attack.

Eventually he turned his back to the path that led on and he looked back into the canyon. He had not realised how deep it truly ran, but after several hours of walking slowly and cautiously he noted how deep it ran with a dull fear in the back of his mind. The cavern system couldn’t continue for much longer. He’d passed the water supply, the obvious former barracks, the past kitchens and the like. The banners and armours bearing sigils he had only seen in books about ancient Lucian history had stopped appearing. This place looked like it had been added some time later; the stone was free from any marks in it. There had been no fights here. A strange silence cloaked this place as he put a hand on the wall that looked like it could close behind him.

If only the wind had blown. It would have been perfect as he walked through the next room, also untouched by signs of fights. It was dark in here, dark enough that he barely saw where he was going. Ignis felt his way through the room, slowly but steadily.

He almost wished he hadn’t when he finally found the exit.

The sight of countless weapons rammed into the solid rock was something that Ignis knew he would never forget. The way they reflected the source of the only light in this place, the strange apparition at the other end of what appeared to be a bridge connecting to a solid rock wall. Most of those weapons were rusted over, some others gleamed in the off violet light. Gladio had said that he had arrived here at sunset, and Ignis could not even begin to imagine what this had looked like. How the weapons would have reflected the blazing sun, how the wind would have howled through the canyon. There were deep gashes in the ground, cracks and fissures that told the story of countless battles fought but none of them ever won until the current head of the Amicitia family had come through here. Not even Cor the Immortal had won here, had nearly died when he had been but a teenager.

Ignis took a tentative step forwards, out of the dark cave – room – and looked around some more.

All of a sudden there was a rush, a loud noise that went through his head. Not as splitting as it had been some months ago, but he had figured out what it was. Whenever something connected to the Founder King’s reign, whenever he thought about Ardyn too long, this noise would start up. It would inhibit his ability to think, would cause him to question everything he had so diligently learned while not allowing him to come to any conclusions. He pressed a hand to his forehead as he took another step forward.

The last thing he needed now was his body rebelling against the shreds of a vision that he would never be allowed to see fully. Thankfully enough as he walked forwards the noise started to vanish until it stopped completely once he stood on the path between rows upon rows of discarded weapons.

He had never seen that many weapons in one place. So many of these were clearly made from Lucian steel, one shattered spear tossed amongst the rows of weapons even looked like it was one of these exceedingly rare and hard to forge spears with heads made from a rare crystal material. So many of them dated way back, some of them even looked as good as new while some of the newer ones were long since rusted and broken. Some others were not Lucian.

The eerie light wafted about, quivering somehow.

Neither Gladio nor Cor had ever talked much about it, but Ignis distinctly remembered that Gladio had mentioned nothing feeling familiar about the Blademaster and how he moved about. Ignis likely would not have realised it either had Noctis not cut their connection and left him starved for the familiarity of being connected to the king, to the Crystal.

He watched in absolute terror as the Blademaster came into being opposite of him with a shift in the power that was so overwhelmingly familiar that it made his stomach churn. After Gladio had returned, before they had set sail for Altissia, Prompto and Noctis had asked Ignis if he had a theory on how the Blademaster had been around for so long. Ignis had truthfully admitted that there were absolutely no comparisons to be drawn and no possible solutions he could come up with. Perhaps the gods thought it would be necessary to keep someone from the old times around to test the Shield, they mused in the end. The Hexatheon acted with reason; a reason most mortals did not get and they were not about to understand either.

Whatever their reason had been, the Six had likely helped the Founder King create a bunch of creatures unbothered by time, disconnected from their flesh safe for their very leader. The Crystal’s power had been used for this just as it had been used to protect the country, protect Insomnia.

He slowly reached for the Trident of the Oracle but hesitated when the Blademaster did not make a move. They remained like that for a long time until he once more got used to the intense feeling of the Crystal’s magic around him.

“Foolish is he who does not heed his own fear – for fear makes one weak, for fear protects one as much as their own strength.”

Ignis held his breath.

“To know one’s strengths is to understand when to go against fear, when to listen and cower. Most who enter here never knew and never learned; went against their fears and died overwhelmed. So tell me, why is it that you are here, going against the fear clawing at your heart?”

A whisper went through the canyon, not unlike a gust of wind. All too suddenly Ignis was painfully aware that he had simply been allowed to go as far as he had because they assumed he would turn tail and flee. Right now he wanted to. He truly, absolutely wanted to turn around and leave, wanted to march to Lestallum and fall to his knees there. Tell them what he had heard, hand over the Trident of the Oracle and the Ring of the Lucii. Call quits. Give up.

But he couldn’t. He couldn’t let that intense desire to return where he came from take over; he had made his choice in Zegnautus Keep and now it was his duty to see it through. His duty to make certain Ardyn at least somewhat assumed that Ignis was at his side. His duty to figure out how to overturn the prophecy.

“… I have a duty to fulfill,” he said slowly, quietly, without looking at the Blademaster, “and no amount of fear will ever keep me from fulfilling my duty.”

“You are not with the Chosen, are you?”

Ignis was holding the trident now, his feet ready for a lunge, a feint, anything. Still he stared at the Blademaster, an uneasy feeling arising in his chest. “I am… not.”

“Are you here on your own accord?”

The uneasy feeling intensified. Was he? He wasn’t so certain of it any longer; perhaps he was as much a toy of the gods as Noctis and Ardyn were. “Yes.”

Once more a murmur went through the canyon, through the dark. The Blademaster raised his hand, a weapon appearing out of thin air. The very motion made Ignis’ blood run cold in his veins. He had seen that hundreds of times, but never in such a way. The red instead of the blue, a colour reminiscent of blood on crystal shards. All of a sudden he understood why Ardyn had done that, how exactly Gilgamesh related to all of this. Why he had been here for two thousand years.

Punishment.

The Blademaster was here because he was being punished for something, and Ardyn had sent Ignis as deliverer of the Accursed’s wrath – his grief, perhaps? Either way, Gilgamesh had to be absolutely and completely aware of who Ignis owed his allegiance to.

“A doubtful knife to replace the hired sword; a lance to pierce the shield. Is there a name to go with the Accursed’s man, or would you prefer dying in anonymity?”

Ignis traced a cleft in the ground with the trident.

“Ignis Scientia.” He was rather surprised by how clear his voice sounded – he did not sound scared the slightest, not determined either. He sounded completely deadpan and neutral.

“So be it. Draw. There will be no withdrawal from this fight – one of us dies today.”

The advisor nodded slowly, trident at the ready.

* * *

Ignis had started training rather late. He had not exactly been required to learn how to fight; an advisor’s job was to advise, not to attack. Still, he had started learning how to defend himself and others with an aggression that few people displayed. At first it had been anything but graceful – Gladio had joked about him and Noctis being very similar in that regard, though several years of training experience separated them by the time Ignis began. People assumed Ignis would be mature, more collected, more skilled.

Thus he made a point to be exactly as they expected him to be. He considered that the ace up his sleeve. Most people would assume that the man who looked rather gangly from afar was a weaker point in the strategy, being the strategist and all. Taking him out would cause the rest of the group to fall into disarray – after all most hunter groups in Lucis were made of fighters, back-ups and the strategist. Normally the strategist stayed back, in safety, and made certain everything went correctly. Take out that person and the rest of the group would start doing things uncoordinated.

Ignis was not that kind of strategist. He’d deliberately chosen a pair of weapons that would require him to get close and personal, made certain he was fast enough on his feet to dodge mostly and still keep an eye on the field. He was lacking in the brute strength department in the end, but a death by a thousand cuts was still a death.

He very quickly came to understand that this was apparently a very Galahdian approach to fights.

Therefore seeing the Blademaster he felt like he was staring into a cloudy mirror of countless members of the Kingsglaive offering to spar with him and Noctis whenever they were on the training grounds. It was an ancient art, yes, but it was absolutely and undeniably Galahdian. Those swift swings, the jabs. Ignis was on the defensive more than he wanted to admit, barely managing to bring up the trident to block a heavy blow and losing more and more ground. He’d lost a sleeve at some point to the rapid and overwhelming attacks from Gilgamesh.

It didn’t help that Gilgamesh seemingly could phase, something that only kings and queens of Lucis were capable of doing. The few jabs he managed with the trident all hit nothing and he just very barely saw the next swing coming. How Cor had even survived long enough to impress this master of swordplay was something that Ignis did not try to think about, but it was absolutely baffling now that he saw how extraordinarily fast he was. Gladio with his brute force and quick blocks despite all that made sense – a stubborn teenager not so much.

Ignis himself?

If he had the time to consider his own survival rate, he’d have come up with a dry laugh and a sad little joke about dead he was. But alas, he was not given a moment to think about it. His body reacted mechanically, blocking blows and losing ground.

Eventually he knocked over a sword – the Blademaster was driving him into the discarded weapons that had been deliberately rammed into the stone here.

“Grh...”

That was when he saw it. That one fatal flaw in Gilgamesh’s attacks. That single, split-second opening. He was fast, yes, but not fast enough. All Ignis needed to do was to somehow stagger the Blademaster, if only for a heartbeat.

He was desperate, knocked over more and more swords. Behind him was only the yawning abyss, the empty canyon. One of the swords he knocked over clattered, fell – he never heard it hitting the bottom.

In a flash of desperation, Ignis used the moment he saw earlier to catch Gilgamesh’s hand with the Trident of the Oracle. It was a risky movement, one he really only used against Iron Giants in the past. Those creatures were slow and a spear would at least keep their free hands from slamming on the ground and causing his allies to stumble. He’d lost several good spears and lances like that, actually; crushed by the sheer strength.

The Trident of the Oracle was not likely to break or bend that easily. And indeed, for a split second the Blademaster staggered.

It was more than enough time for Ignis to draw one of the daggers and ram it into his opponent.

For a moment everything held still. Nothing but the same choking silence that had accompanied him as he walked through the caverns was around. A long pause, a draw of breath. Ignis broke the silence by yanking the trident away and holding it against the Blademaster’s neck.

Gilgamesh did not seem fazed by that the slightest. “To think… that I would see Mori again.”

Mori.

The dagger he had drawn had been the one Ardyn had tossed him what felt like a lifetime ago. A weapon that was so terrifying that it haunted Ignis in his dreams, glinted stark silver against the blackened skies, Ardyn’s gloved hands, Noctis’ black clothes. A weapon that likely had a history that Ignis would never learn, for there was only one person on Eos who knew it, and Ardyn was not going to tell it.

Or so he had assumed.

“You… know this weapon?” Perhaps talking to his opponent was not good, but the atmosphere had shifted violently from battle to the death to confusion.

It was stuck in the mask, having been rammed into one of the holes left for the eyes. There was something running down the blade, and Ignis was not sure if he could truly call that blood. It was dark, discoloured – but it was not the same kind of blood that those infected by the Scourge bled.

“A weapon meant for defence, used in aggression – blood staining what should never be touched by something so impure. Those who refused to leave behind that fallen saviour were banished, banished to where not too long ago the gods had waged their battle. A scar left in the earth, a scorned group – held in eternity by the Draconian, for death was too good for those that did not follow the gods’ words. To test we remained, to strengthen the Chosen’s Shield. Yet here it is once more, in the hands of… a Scientia. Is this a joke?”

Ignis had no answer. He truly had no answer for the Blademaster as they stood there, discoloured blood dripping off the weapon the Accursed had given him as it remained firmly stuck between the mask, stuck in the Blademaster’s face or whatever remained of it behind it.

That was the second opening that Gilgamesh left during the eternal night. It was an underhanded tactic, one that Ignis would have never openly used against anyone. Not even as they had hunted down Caligo Ulldor had he or Noctis ever used anything that underhanded.

But still.

One of them would have to die. And Ignis was not going to fall that day.

Before Gilgamesh could react to what he was doing, Ignis had drawn the second dagger.

Memento.

Rammed it under the mask, between steel and armour into putrid flesh. He barely felt the pain as Gilgamesh retaliated, did not feel as the blade tore through his own shoulder. He needed to use more force. With clenched teeth Ignis used his strength, managed to topple over the almost impressively giant man.

A loud clatter echoed through the canyon.

* * *

A loud clatter echoed through the street.

Ignis spat on the ground, more blood than anything else. A mad drive back to the crown city, a katana stuck in his shoulder. Still, Ardyn barely blinked as he looked at what Ignis had tossed him. Picked it up with his expression not changing at all.

“Here’s your proof,” Ignis wheezed, “he’s dead.”

Ardyn almost gently brushed over the bent mask with the dagger still embedded in it, looked at the dry blood first and his supposed ally on the verge of collapse second.

“I do not recall giving the order to _kill_ him.”

Ignis refused to sink to the ground before this man once more. He was dizzy, the blood loss was making him nauseous and very, very moody.

“Indeed you haven’t, but considering we challenged each other to a battle to the death I was not exactly left with much of a choice here.”

It had been a poor show of sportsmanship; and he had paid the price for it. It hurt like all hells themselves and he was once more going to faint in front of Ardyn before long, but he noted with no small amount of satisfaction that the Accursed did indeed look impressed for a second. Ardyn yanked the knife out of the bent steel, eyed the blade in his hands for a good minute or so.

“Time had no effect on them, but that did not make them immortal. Were they your servants? Were they being punished for their loyalty to you?”

“Even as their flesh crumbled they were denied what I was denied. But unlike me they lacked something very important – for the Scourge needs its host in his best health. Bahamut’s little playthings, eerie guardians of a long-abandoned art were not needed. Crumbling flesh, but still the same minds.”

“I figured as much.” Ignis staggered a little as he stood there, the dizziness getting worse. Perhaps the blade was poisoned. “Either way, the Blademaster is no more and his companions fell deathly silent as his body tumbled to the bottom of the canyon below.”

He was definitely not proud of that. He could have left, katana stuck in his shoulder and all. Could have left and never returned. But instead, like a madman possessed, he had shoved the Blademaster off his stone bridge. None would ever find the master of the Proving Grounds even if he regenerated like Ardyn did. There was absolutely no return from a canyon that deep, and Ignis shook off the intense realisation that it could have easily been him who would have gotten flung into that yawning abyss.

Halfway back to Insomnia he had started hysterically laughing. This wasn’t good at all, but for a moment all he had been able to think about had been the fact that he had done what neither the fabled Cor the Immortal, Marshal of the Crownsguard, nor Gladiolus Amicitia, Shield of the Chosen, had managed.

He had truly, completely defeated the Blademaster. Left no trace of the man.

After what seemed like an eternity, Ardyn moved. Closed the distance between them and put a hand on the katana.

_Yanked._

Ignis nearly bit off his tongue trying not to scream in pain as Ardyn removed the weapon and tossed it onto the ground. Before he could do anything else, even just sway before collapsing, Ardyn put a finger against Ignis’ forehead. It looked kind of silly even to his bizarrely blurry sight.

“Well,” Ardyn’s voice sounded distant, “you did as I asked and shall receive as you wanted. Sleep well.”

Ignis fell.


	9. king of the moonless people

At first he tried not paying too much attention to it. Instead he extended his shaky hands to the people who arrived, made certain that everything in Lestallum went smoothly and without incident. They welcomed people from Tenebrae, from Accordo, from all over Lucis. One woman, shaken and bleeding but _alive_ even looked at him for a long while – she had the looks of someone from a mining town in Cartanica about her. Then she let out a confused laugh, said that she hadn’t expected King Noctis to be the boy who had nearly fallen asleep in her Lucian husband’s store while leaning against a much taller man.

Just as Ravus had said, Noctis curled up in his room when he was alone. At some point he stopped crying when he did that, but it was comforting to have moments for himself. But as soon as the crying stopped occurring he instead started thinking about Ignis. Which was, truth be told, the worst thing he could do.

So he started paying attention to the yearning abyss in his heart – and after a month in the dark, he decided he needed to do something about it.

None would let him go on a hunt quite yet. His presence was soothing, gave the people hope that the light would return if they just believed in it. King Noctis would figure out a way after honing his skills, King Noctis would bring peace to the world. After all Lady Lunafreya had said that, she had sworn it solemnly – and beside the king stood the late Oracle’s brother. Surely those ancient and most revered bloodlines could bring back the light if they just worked together.

Truth be told, Noctis avoided working with Ravus. The man was intimidating, there was a rift that blatantly bore Luna’s name between them, and both of them had different jobs in Lestallum. Noctis was a figurehead, the leader of the hunters and Crownsguard, the man who the Kingsglaives listened to.

Ravus was the employer of a ragtag bunch of Niffs who weren’t all that bad for Niffs, a man who definitely fought with the mercenary leader Aranea Highwind more than he actually sent her off for scouting missions.

Noctis usually hung around the Glaives. With Drautos dead there was no one to take over for the man, and all of the Glaives who arrived at Lestallum vehemently refused to lead the remaining members. There was something these people weren’t telling him, but for the time being Noctis enjoyed being around the colourful mixture of people and personalities. Prompto and Iris generally joined him; Gladio was busying himself with taking care of the hunters since Cor had the Crownsguard under control.

He phased past a ball of fire that one of the Glaives had tossed at him.

“That was a lot better, Gloria!” Iris cheered from the sidelines, clapping her hands together.

Prompto furrowed his brows. “You aim’s still a little off, though. Maybe trying to go back-up mage isn’t what you’re made for.”

He very quickly started to understand which Glaives had been involved with the group that Libertus had usually hung out with and which weren’t. The way Gloria looked she likely was trying to fill the gap that Crowe Altius’ death had left in the Glaive, and she shook her head slowly. “No I… I need to figure this out. I’m so close, if I just continue trying...”

Noctis turned his head slightly to look over at the rest of this merry bunch of Glaives that were currently not on a mission. Most of them were training to use their powers properly again, some noted that warping had become much easier but tired them out faster. Members of the Kingsglaive now seemingly went into stasis just as Noctis did when he went past his stamina – complete with the fevers, the cold shakes, the nausea. He noted that there was an unhealthy sheen on Gloria’s face when he looked back and then shook his head.

“You’re taking a break, that’s what you’re gonna do. And no complaints; that’s an order.” He looked back at the rest. “That goes for all of you, actually. Take the rest of the day off unless an emergency requires immediate deployment.”

There was that lingering stare he got from Libertus Ostium; something that Noctis had gotten used to by now. The man always looked like he wanted to say something but always thought better of it and never said anything. It made Noctis uneasy whenever he thought about it – he’d heard Glaives mention that Libertus had made it out of Insomnia despite having been in the heart of the city when the attacks on it started. Some assumed he had sided with Niflheim, but the man definitely did not look like someone who had sold his soul to the empire.

Besides, the empire was no more.

No matter how many times Ravus deployed the mercenaries, they never returned with any civilians. The army’s checkpoints and bases all around Eos were desolate, empty; not even commanders remained. It seemed as if nothing of Niflheim remained except for the terrible memories that sometimes haunted him and the others. Perhaps it was for the best, but an entire country wiped out was not something the prophecies foretold. Even Aranea looked vaguely unhappy whenever she and hers returned.

Noctis watched the Glaives trot off to their normal posts, back to the families or the people they knew.

Two months into darkness he decided to prepare for the inevitable day that Ardyn would toss Ignis at him. Ignis had to be possessed, brainwashed.

Noctis turned in bed and stared at the wall, thinking back to all the times that Ignis had sworn over and over again that he would always be beside him. All those times he had almost solemnly sworn that he would do everything in his power to keep Noctis safe – till death do them part. But not a death on a battlefield, but rather the death of a king who ruled long and well and the death of an advisor who had supported the throne his entire life.

Iris always commented on how cranky he looked when he asked spear-wielding Glaives to spar with him. Put a hand on his arm and asked him to stop for the day, pulled him through Lestallum and pointed out how well the fortification had gone. How Dino Ghiranze of all people out there had managed to save no less than a hundred people stuck in the wilderness with nothing but the tales of the precious stones that Noctis and hie retinue had picked up for him in that place. Unassuming faces became local heroes; Talcott himself was starting to become some sort of messenger, quick on his feet and more than happy to help the EXINERIS employees when they were short on staff.

Iris had declined a position at the plant.

“I want the Marshal and Gladdy to stop being so stuck up and let me train with the Glaives.”

A noble lady becoming a Kingsglaive was completely unheard of, but that day as she pulled him through the streets to get him out of his funk, Noctis had to admit it fit.

“If I had any say in the matter, I’d make you a Glaive and let Gloria and Libertus start training you immediately.”

“You’re the king! Of course you have a say in the matter!” She beamed, her smile almost brighter than the harsh electric lights around them. “Well, mostly. Gladdy would probably crack your skull for that, and the Marshal… I guess he promised dad that he’d make certain I don’t put myself into unnecessary danger.”

Instead of saying anything he put a hand on her shoulder.

“They’ll let you, eventually. Keep asking.”

“Oh, I will! You better prepare yourself for the day Iris Amicitia becomes a Kingsglaive!”

* * *

One day a new batch of refugees arrived, escorted by a bunch of badly bruised Glaives. They’d received the emergency call three hours ago, and all of Lestallum had been on high alert. One face in the crowd stood out, and Noctis felt all blood drain from his face.

It wasn’t very often that people saw Ignis Scientia with his family. Most people who did not know the inner machinations of the Citadel would assume that he was an orphan living with his uncle Ortus Scientia, unbothered by having other familial ties to the city or Lucis. A Scientia was supposed to be wholly devoted to the crown if they were chosen as advisor, after all; other siblings were free to do as they saw fit. Noctis could count the times he had met Ignis’ parents on both hands – the last face he had expected to ever pop up was that of Rhea Scientia.

The woman looked like a wreck, much like any other refugee who arrived in Lestallum these days. But the second she spotted Noctis, her face lit up as she scanned the area around him.

After all, Ignis and Noctis rarely ever parted.

His heart felt so very heavy when her hopeful expression froze; a dark shadow falling over her bruised face.

He really only wanted to bolt, run away from this woman and never look out of the window again. Her brother had died in the Citadel with the rest of the council, just like Clarus Amicitia had. The fact that her husband was not with her meant that he had died just as her brother had, and now she arrived in Lestallum to see her son’s best friend and charge without her son by his side.

Noctis barely even registered Prompto beside him freezing and whispering “dad” before bolting into the group of refugees, barely noticed how a good amount of Crownsguard found family members they long considered dead and gone. Cor had mentioned that a group had fled somewhere that was not Lestallum, as far away from Insomnia as possible.

Rhea Scientia peeled herself out of the group, insisted that she was not hurt. There was a desperation in her eyes as she walked up to him, a fear that Noctis had never wished upon anyone’s faces, least of all the parents of the people he was closest to.

“Your High… Majesty.” She bowed, visibly shaking.

He nodded at her, unable to say anything. This woman was a stranger to him; he’d only met her a few times and every time Ignis had been with him. Those were the times that Ignis dropped the professionalism just as he did when he was on his own with Noctis. The side that so few people saw of him, the loving friend, the lover, the affectionate son. If Noctis and Gladio had not been mourning their own parents, Noctis was fairly certain that Ignis would have let his guard down in the open. Would have wept for father and uncle.

But here his mother was, about as healthy as a refugee rescued from an obscene amount of Daemons could be. Shaken, but alive.

She looked around again, the fear obvious on her face.

Before she could ask him where Ignis was, Noctis shook his head. “He’s alive. I know he is – but he’s not here. And I’ll make certain he returns to you in one piece. Alive.”

He promised that to a lot of people – women, men, children. People who had once hated the monarchy, people who had never once considered him to one day grow up to be half as good a king as he father had been. People who had decried him, people who had opposed him. People who had cursed the Lucis Caelum bloodline. He still made certain to promise them that he would do everything in his power to find their missing family members, hopefully return them alive. In the crowd, Prompto and his parents clung to one another. Many others held onto their families they had thought lost.

Noctis, Gladio and Iris made certain that Rhea Scientia found a quiet corner of Lestallum to stay. Eventually an old lady from Old Lestallum who had moved into her dead son’s apartment offered to take care of the woman who could only stand there with tears streaming down her face. He accepted her offer and he and the Amicitias watched as the lady started talking to Mrs Scientia as if she were her daughter-in-law.

Gladio only shook his head.

* * *

It had begun as a game between the three of them. Cor and Gladio remained immovable, their stance not changing.

Iris grew frustrated, and eventually Prompto suggested that maybe he and Noctis should be the ones to train her. It wasn’t like Iris wasn’t physically strong – what she lacked was an understanding for weapons and a connection to the king. With the Marshal and the Shield out in the field that often they eventually decided that they would train her, starting with granting her access to the Armiger. For a week Iris wallowed in the misery and fever of magic, but the second she felt better she had dragged both Prompto and Noctis to the training grounds. There was a fire in her step as she soaked up as much knowledge as she could, a fire in her eyes when Noctis offered her a few basic weapons.

Amicitias were expected to pick a shield. They were tall – Iris was starting to shoot up, finally hitting the growth spurt she had asked for – and they were built. The finest Lucian guardsmen and guardswomen, the ones who protected the royal family. Noctis expected her to pick a shield and a sword like her brother. Prompto joked about it as well.

Iris went for a mace instead.

All things considered it was a perfect fit; Iris had deliberately done that. She was learning very quickly, managing to keep up the pace with the skittish Prompto in about half a month. The only thing that took her a while was summoning a weapon. Everything else, from basic battle tactics to more advanced manoeuvrers, she picked up faster than some of the newer Kingsglaive recruits.

“Hey, I mean, I’ve got you guys and Gloria, and Libertus. Between you four I’m learning everything I could ever need on tactics!”

It didn’t strike Noctis until a month had passed that Iris was effectively his first and only Glaive. Prompto and Gladio were his Crownsguard, two people he trusted blindly. Iris could have easily been a Crownsguard if she just wanted to, and one day he told her as much. Prompto was out on a scouting mission with Gladio and Cor, and Iris looked thoughtful for a good moment before summoning her weapon to her side. He hadn’t even noticed how good she had become at that.

“I mean, it’s true and all. I could’ve been a Crownsguard. The first Crownsguard you ever appointed and everything. But…” She took a deep breath and shook her head. “It felt wrong.”

“Why’s that?”

She tilted her head at him; she was the same height as him now. There was something in the expression she wore right now that was absolutely unreadable for him, but eventually she cracked a very sad smile.

“I’d just be filling Ignis’ shoes. I don’t want to be his replacement in your life, Noct.”

He looked at her for a long while. Her sad smile, the weapon at her side. It was a far cry from the girl he had lied for, had gotten grounded for. A far cry from the girl who had handed him a hand-made plush creation that she had obviously put a lot of effort, time and affection into.

“I’d never replace him. But I wouldn’t force someone to be his replacement either.”

She stared at him with wide eyes now.

“You’ll always be Iris to me. Same old, same old.”

Somehow she didn’t look happier.

* * *

Ravus and Noctis did not speak often. Usually it was about important things, about logistics and refugees, about their callings as blood of the Oracle and Chosen.

Lestallum’s greenhouse district was exactly what it said on the tin; greenhouses. Some of them contained cattle and Chocobos, but for the most part this was where the people grew vegetables and otherwise useful plants. Noctis had come here on that day because he wanted a breather from training Glaives, especially after that week of silent anger following an outburst. Neither Gladio nor Cor had been too happy with Iris officially proclaiming herself a Kingsglaive-in-training, but Gladio’s unhappiness had come to a peak when he found out how Noctis and Prompto fit into the equation.

They had only just reconciled, but Noctis was emotionally exhausted after that. He hated fighting with his friends, because usually they brought up Ignis in some way. Just as Iris had assumed, Gladio had asked if he was trying to replace the man with his sister who should not be fighting.

This small corner of the greenhouse district housed Sylleblossoms. A servant of house Fleuret had brought them with her; brittle and almost wilted little things that she had taken from Luna’s gardens before she fled the country at Ravus’ insistence. Something about these flowers soothed him, and it was exactly what he needed.

Unfortunately it also seemed to be something that Ravus sought often; solace in a world full of troubles. A fleeting memory of his sister. Those flowers were from her garden, after all.

How they had not run into one another while slinking about the greenhouse district was a mystery to Noctis. They nodded at each other, stared at the flowers side by side.

Eventually Noctis turned to look at the man.

“Hey, I’ve got a question.”

Some of the Glaives occasionally mentioned that Ravus was there when Noctis was not. He apparently had developed an interest in seeing the healing magic that the Glaives used – it was far from as powerful as what Luna had been able to do back when she was alive, but it was something almost unheard of on Eos. An art that was similar to what his sister had used, an art that was normally reserved for his own bloodline. Noctis watched Ravus brush his hand over the Sylleblossoms before he turned back around.

“Then ask.”

“You’ve been spending a lot of time with the Glaives when I’m not there. Is it because they can heal?”

There weren’t exactly many ways to make Ravus clam up – the man barely spoke as it was. He technically was the High Commander Nox Fleuret of Niflheim, the highest position one could attain in the Niff army without being the head of the MT project or the emperor himself. A man from a subjugated country who met all resistance with scorn and owed his allegiance to no one; the country he served had butchered his mother and taken his throne from him, but Tenebraen sons and daughters did not like the way he worked with the empire at all. He was not chatty, he had never needed to be chatty. Normally the sword by his side did the talking for him, and it was absolutely no secret that Ravus was extremely powerful. Overwhelmingly so, even.

“Simple… curiosity. For the most part.”

Noctis crossed his arms. That was absolutely not what he wanted to hear, but the man remained quiet. It definitely didn’t feel like the same man who had grabbed him time and time again to smack some sense back into him whenever the grief became too overwhelming. This Ravus seemed vulnerable somehow, much more like the traumatised teenager that Luna had stayed behind for. The brother she always called gentle and caring when he wasn’t putting on a front, the brother-in-law she would have wanted him to meet.

“Is that really all?”

A long moment of silence. Then Ravus sighed.

“Whatever Luna did at the Altar of the Tidemother before her passing unravelled some of the most basic rules of magic. You have to understand one thing – I was not born with this power, never received training for it. How it manifests now should be impossible altogether; I doubt you remember her but… my mother said so. An Oracle is never wrong about things concerning magic.”

People said that Ravus had stopped calling Luna by her nickname when the empire took over. She had written that herself, her handwriting as neat and tidy as always, but Noctis knew that that had to be hard to write. It was hard to lose your only living family to the enemy that killed their mother.

“So you’re _training_ with the Glaives. None of them mentioned that.”

“Because I asked them not to.”

“Is that why you only go there when I’m otherwise occupied?”

They had never been friends. Ravus shot Noctis an annoyed look, a sour expression on his face. The answer was obvious enough.

Ravus had hated the Lucian royal family, King Regis specifically. He had assumed Noctis to be a weak and pathetic fool of a prince, had thought he would have to do more pulling and tearing away at the walls that Noctis had built around him to get him to stop what other people called _sulking._ This man was not his friend, just an ally of circumstance.

“Well, I really don’t bite. I’ll definitely ask Libertus if he’s got any ideas about it; his late adoptive sister used to be rather outstanding at magic in general. Maybe he can help you figure out something.”

It should be around the time that Prompto returned from his mission. Noctis bid farewell to Ravus and started walking away.

He almost missed the man muttering a low “thanks”.

* * *

Eventually he grew restless. The people loved him, more than they had ever done back in Insomnia. Prince Noctis had been a dreary reminder that King Regis was growing weaker day by day, a young replacement for a king who knew the country and what was best for it. A well-groomed royal with little opinion and no involvement with other people, a lone wolf without fangs. King Noctis was now the king they could talk to, the one who walked the streets with them. A quiet but gentle person who helped the men and women he could have simply appointed to run everything in this town.

The only thing that they did not let him do was leave Lestallum.

Once he’d tried bribing Aranea to take him on a scouting mission to Niflheim with her, but the mercenary had firmly refused him. He was fairly certain she would have blown him back even if he offered her the Crystal itself, and he had watched with an angry scowl how they left. Prompto consistently told Noctis that his missions were solo missions, somewhere out in the field where they needed a good runner like Prompto.

Even Iris was allowed outside with the Glaives now, and Noctis remained to pace like a tiger in a cage.

He wanted to get out there. Wanted to see his country, to see what he had been born to save.

In the end he realised that they were trying to keep him far, far away from the wilderness because they feared Noctis would march right to Insomnia to take Ignis back by force. The longer he thought about that, he more he started to realise that he would have done that right away.

Ignis had to be under Ardyn’s control. He was absolutely convinced of that, with several people agreeing with him. Gladio and Cor were the ones who truly doubted that and assumed that Ignis was acting out of his own free will.

Even Ravus, waiting for his mercenaries to return, agreed that something about Ignis’ sudden face-heel turn did not add up.

Noctis stared at the man as he paced near the entrance to Lestallum. Whenever everyone was out of the town they assigned Ravus to make certain Noctis did not escape. Neither of them were too happy with that, but after eight months in the darkness, Noctis had to admit that he had long since gotten used to Ravus. He never really wanted to, but there were worse things to get used to.

One thing he’d never get used to was Ignis’ absence.

He missed getting prodded awake by his advisor, missed his atrocious puns and jokes whenever the mood struck him. Sometimes Noctis wanted to turn around and see Ignis walk around a corner, have the man collapse in the streets and recover from whatever it was that Ardyn had done to him. Come back.

“She’s taking longer than usual.”

Noctis kicked a tin. “Maybe she found something, then?”

Ravus shook his head. “I didn’t send her to go scout for people this time.”

“Oh?”

The High Commander sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I sent her to the first Magitek production facility.”

Perhaps to bury his regrets, Noctis noted. Ravus had the air of someone guilty of something rather atrocious about him, but Noctis wasn’t entirely sure whether he could pry into that or not. Eventually he settled for sitting down on the ground. “Why there?”

Ravus even looked guilty by now, obviously debating what to say with himself internally by now. Ignis often did something similar when they were teenagers and he had done or said something that King Regis would clearly disapprove of; most prominently when it was about whether he and Noctis got along again or not. But this was not the look of someone who was in a relationship with the prince, this was the look of someone who had caused quite a few innocents to lose their lives.

“To make certain that… certain people do not get a chance to unleash something upon us again. How much did Aranea tell you when you were with her in Steyliff Grove?”

Noctis shrugged. “Enough for us to understand that the empire’s pretty fucked up, but not enough to warrant a death penalty for treason.”

“The Daemons that ravaged Insomnia the night it fell were… artificially manufactured in facilities all across Niflheim.” There was that guilt again as Ravus turned to look at the barricade. Noctis was starting to suspect that someone had to have signed the papers that allowed the creatures to be dropped into the city that night, and Ravus had been Deputy High Commander until that very night. “I want her to check if their creator is still alive and either apprehend him or dispose of him. Or if there are any other scientists left. Anything or anyone involved with the MT project.”

Noctis tapped his chin. Lestallum was eerily quiet this day; most Glaives were deployed and the civilians stayed in the civilian areas. “Do you think she’ll find something?”

“I sincerely hope she does because it might lead us to Niff survivors but… truth be told, no. I do not expect her to return with anything of note.”

“How come?”

Ravus did not answer him because somewhere behind them they heard someone running towards them in armour. That could only be Aranea, and surely enough when he looked over his shoulder Noctis saw the mercenary. Biggs and Wedge were following her but unable to keep up properly, still a few hundred metres or so behind their boss. Judging from the sheer distance Aranea had leapt out of the airship and broken into a mad sprint to find the High Commander to report back.

“Aranea…?”

“You won’t believe this shit. The entire fucking facility’s flattened! Has been flattened since darkness fell, probably, judging from the way snow’s covering everything.”

Ravus tapped his foot against the ground after he tossed Noctis a quick glance. “Which means his theory of Scientia being brainwashed has solid grounds. Ardyn is anything but sloppy, if he needs to destroy evidence he goes all out.”

Noctis blinked. He hadn’t even known that Ravus even thought about Ignis at all. Then again the two of them had fought together for a few hours to the to the Altar of the Tidemother. Perhaps Ignis had won the High Commander’s respect during the fight they had there – but Noctis would have never expected Ravus to listen to the theory that most people blew off and considered an impossibility, let alone have Aranea look into it.

He wanted to say something to the Tenebraen and the Niff, but before he ever could they head a loud clanging noise. Someone was at the gates, and they were in a hurry. That generally was a bad sign, and Noctis rushed to meet whoever it was.

Prompto nearly bowled him over; they barely avoided crashing into one another. Prompto jumped from one foot to the other, his gaze nervously jumping from one place to the other.

“Noct! Gods, Noct, shit! Ravus! The Marshal! Anyone! Where!?”

“Calm down, man! Tell me what’s wrong.”

Ravus and Aranea walked over, obviously curious as to why Prompto was yelling. He continued nervously bouncing from one foot to the other.

“You won’t believe it, but Iris and I, we were like just… scouting around, checking the area, making jokes and all that. No Daemons on the plains near the canyon, right?”

Noctis didn’t like where this was going. Prompto and Iris often went out together when he was not on one of his solo scouting missions, often to train her out in the open rather than just here in Lestallum. Usually he just made her run laps through uneven grounds so she would know how to sprint in combat, how to gain ground when she was outnumbered. He quickly texted Cor that he was needed at the gates, likely for an emergency deployment and then put both his hands on Prompto’s shoulders to force his friend to stop bouncing around.

“I’m guessing you ran into Daemons? Where’s Iris?”

Cor was also sprinting around the corner by now, and Prompto took a deep breath.

“Well, no Daemons. But we found people, huddled together. But like, not your average refugees. _Niffs._ We found Niffs, alive and shaken and all that. Before we could even ask what they were doing there this… entire fucking swarm of Daemons came out of nowhere and surrounded us, and...”

Iris had sent the fastest runner to deliver an emergency message. There was no phone signal outside of Lestallum, but Prompto was light on his feet. Even though he looked utterly shaken – they had gone about an hour away from Lestallum. Prompto must have covered that same distance in half an hour at best. But every second that ticked by was a second that Iris and the Niffs lost.

“Aranea, make ready for emergency deployment. Get your people back to the airship,” Ravus said and the woman immediately jogged away, “but wait for the Marshal and me!”

Cor and Ravus started urgently discussing something for about twenty seconds before they followed Aranea.

Noctis was left with the shaking Prompto.

All he could really do was put his arms around his friend and wait. They wouldn’t have let him go with them anyway and so Noctis was forced to watch the airship leave.

“I shouldn’t have left her, I shouldn’t have left her… Gods, Noct, I shouldn’t have left her!”

The dark had never felt that choking before. Ignis would have known what to say to Prompto to soothe his nerves. Ignis had always known which words were necessary where, but all Noctis did was hold his shaking friend.

They could only wait and see.

“Iris...”


	10. 'This story's jury and executioner is you, whether you want to be or not,' the judge tells you with an unsettling smile.

His dreams were a dissonant cacophony of nonsense, of a city burning even though he had never seen it burn. The voice that he had heard at the Altar of the Tidemother was not the same voice he heard in Zegnautus Keep, and the voice haunting him now was different too. It was too distorted for Ignis to understand anything as the city burnt and corrupted further around him. He couldn’t even raise his hands to block out the screeching noise, couldn’t run as everything around him started to tremble and collapse, could only stare as the falling and burning buildings collided, covered him in soot and ash and fire.

He jerked awake, the sudden movement making a pain shoot through his entire body that made him see stars. He sunk back into the bed he had been unceremoniously dumped in and stared at the ceiling. The world was turning but he was awake, he was alive. He tried to ignore the flashes of red that went through his vision occasionally, tried to focus on blocking out the static noise in his head. He didn’t exactly succeed at either until he passed out again.

* * *

He found the Accursed standing on top of a lamppost.

Ignis barely remembered his recovery phase through all the hacked up strings of garbled nonsense that his mind had subjected him to, but he awoke this day feeling like nothing ever happened other than the sharp pain in his shoulder.

Somehow when he had checked his shoulder in a mirror he had noticed that the muscle had knit back together while he slept. He preferred not to think about the obvious implications here; Ardyn being able to heal seemed to completely contradict the fact that he was the Accursed.

He approached the man for another reason, however. A week of fitful tossing and turning, of nonsensical dreams and sharp red flashes whenever he opened his eyes. It hadn’t been until today that he remembered why this had been so oddly familiar, and the realisation had nearly knocked him unconscious again. Instead he had dragged himself out and into the streets a few hours ago. He had ignored the strange yet familiar pull and gone to look for the man until at last he decided to follow it.

There was a reason Ignis had always known where Noctis was. The magic of royalty manifested differently across people, and Ignis had been granted the ability to sense wherever the royal who had given him that power was. Even when fighting at night, when he was unable to see properly, he had always been able to tell right away where Noctis was. He always knew when Noctis was oversleeping, had even known that he had skipped school one day because he had not felt like dealing with a teacher.

His voice was barely more than a croak when he spoke; a week of not using it and the strain he had been under all but nearly rendering him useless. “You…”

The man on the lamppost did not react. Not a twitch, not a shrug, nothing. Instead he kept his back turned to the advisor and his eyes likely on the building across the street. Ignis didn’t know what was so interesting about it, but in those past months he had learned that Ardyn was extraordinarily hard to parse. His inability to guess what the man was thinking was going to turn into a horrible weak spot somewhere down the line; he wanted to make certain he had the upper hand, after all.

Ignis had been significantly younger and healthier back when Noctis had managed to share his powers with his best friend and future advisor. His only concern back then had been Noctis apologising wildly as his body adjusted to the strange sensation of a foreign power linked to him; nowadays he had quite a burden to bear. One such burden was the Ring of the Lucii he kept in his makeshift room at the Citadel – Ardyn was not the sort to rummage through one’s belongings. He actually spent as little time as possible within the Citadel and generally stuck to slinking about like a ghost haunting the halls whenever he was inside. In a sense he was the ghost haunting these halls, the ghost that wished to spill the blood of the family that shunned it. The ghost that had succeeded in completely undoing what the family had built. A poltergeist of the worst sort.

“How nice of you to finally rejoin the living, loosely as that term might apply to whatever remains in Insomnia.” Ardyn still did not turn around; he barely even moved as he spoke. “I do hope your sleep has been… _invigorating.”_

He’d never thought about it too much since then, but there were several very pressing questions that Ignis had that he knew the answers for would likely not be pretty for. One of them was how his shoulder had recovered that quickly; not that he was capable of using it properly right now. The sting would remain just as Noctis’ old injury haunted him even to this day. Not debilitating in the long run, but dangerous should be exhaust himself too much. There was just no way that this had healed this quickly naturally, and Ignis was fairly certain that Ardyn did not have the ability to magically infuse energy drinks and the like to turn them into rejuvenating or healing potions. In fact, nothing about this felt as Noctis’ power had.

Noctis’ power had been constructive, a gentle tug. Cold but familiar, comforting.

Ardyn’s on the other hand, in that split second he tried calling upon it, was a swirling maelstrom. Deep, dark, destructive. Scathingly hot and disconcerting.

It made him regret ever checking if there had been a connection, it made him gag violently. It was foreign and felt wrong, so wrong that he blacked out for a second.

“Do be careful; upsetting your stomach so soon after waking up will benefit none, least of all yourself.”

Back then King Regis had made certain nothing happened. He had been around, had reassured Ignis’ almost fretful mother that nothing bad was happening and this was simply a natural reaction. Even Lord Clarus had joked that it had knocked him down for a week as well and that Ignis was recovering remarkably quickly. He almost wanted Ardyn to get down from his perch to at least make certain that everything went right.

But since Ignis was standing everything had gone correctly. He did have a natural connection to a Lucis Caelum’s magic, and he had been with Noctis’ powers for so long it wasn’t even that foreign.

“Now then, before you _think_ you will get something as fanciful as access to an Armiger, I’ll have to disappoint. Unfortunately that is linked to the Crystal.”

“But Gralea… the research facility...”

“An illusion, what else? Magic disguised as royal arms. Did you truly believe that I could summon willy-nilly what not even your _dearest_ Noctis could without the help of the Oracle?”

Part of Ignis had.

Then again Ardyn had flawlessly appeared as Gladio, though Ravus had seen through that nonsense right away. How exactly he had managed that remained a mystery to Ignis, but now that he thought about it…

“So that’s your magic? Illusory?”

“That, my dear Ignis, is a story for another day. Go back to bed, you are not fully recovered yet. We can’t exactly have you run yourself to death before that wound on your shoulder heals properly.”

The man vanished with those words in the blink of an eye, leaving Ignis with the foreign and disgusting feeling of someone else’s magic thrumming through his veins.

* * *

His craftiness was often compared to that of people who made the cut for the Kingsglaive. Those people were all adaptable and fast, unusually skilled with magic that came in many flavours. Noctis had a talent for Elemancy; King Regis had often been described as thunderstorm when he was on the battlefield, an impenetrable shield of fire and lightning. Noctis had never developed a taste for shielding, instead relying on warping to a degree that members of the Crownsguard often joked about him being more Glaive than King.

Ignis in turn had never warped. He simply couldn’t, the art too much for him despite his craftiness. Some people compared him to Cor in that regard – powerful with what he managed doing, but unable to do other things. The Marshal in particular refused to use magic of any kind and instead had taken to using the ability to summon weapons to his advantage.

The only son of House Scientia had instead turned to infusing his weapons. Fire, ice and thunder ever on the tip of his tongue, flasks at the ready even before he figured out how to call upon elements without the aid of Noctis quite literally bottling it up and handing it to him.

Ironically enough it was fire that bent to his will the easiest, with the most raw destructive power. He almost missed the flames dancing over his daggers when he tested the new waters.

The new waters were wilder than the familiar ones. Instead of pure fire it was something he had only ever seen Daemons use that now answered his calls – green fire. Staring at it for too long made Ignis feel strange – it was foreign, it didn’t belong here. Only Daemons used it.

He was fairly certain he was healthy. People who contracted the Scourge, and by extension likely Ardyn, were always in excruciating pain as soon as they caught it. It was a slow, agonising progress that made them give up all hope, though it allegedly did have different durations from person to person. Some lived with it for barely more than a week, others lived until they were old and fragile before the Oracle ever reached them.

No, all things considered, Ignis was healthy and in full control of his wits still. The green flames whispered just like the fire had back when he was with his friends, with the only person he loved more than life itself. A familiar dance, and Ignis tossed the dagger a few feet. It hit the debris with a loud clang, ricocheted off it and did not move again. The fire did not go out, and Ignis focused on it for a second. The flames grew higher, a bizarre tree blooming and bending to his will.

He always played with it when he wasn’t in combat. Once he had figured it out properly he had done it for fun when he was on his own; eventually he had settled for messing around with it while cooking. A flash of ice to cool a drink, a spark of electricity between his fingers as he waited for something to finish cooking. Ignis roused the sickly green flame higher and higher until his body reacted to it. The sudden nausea that he had long since come to associate with overdoing magic, the one that the Glaives and Noctis usually encountered when their warps went wrong.

He quenched the flame. The sickly green vanished nearly immediately, nothing more than a bad memory as he went to pick up the dagger.

There were quite a lot of things that he wanted to know, but first and foremost he was worried about one thing.

Was this telling him in advance what sort of Daemon he would turn into if he dragged this out for too long, if he failed to keep up his cover and Ardyn decided he had enough? Normally only Necromancer-types used that sort of magic; corroding and stifling, choking and overwhelming. It didn’t _feel_ corroding right now, but the colour alone was enough to send cold shivers down his spine. They’d fought their fair share of these creatures, and now that he thought about it they were also called _crafty._ Every other Crownsguard, every other Kingsglaive, even King Regis, had called him that. That jolt of terror that went through Ignis as he marched back to the Citadel was electrifying, quite literally. He felt wired, his tiredness gone all of a sudden.

The last thing he wanted right now was a confrontation with the Accursed, but Ardyn’s impeccable skill to arrive in the most inopportune moments came into play once more. The man stood in front of the Citadel with his arms crossed and his back to Ignis, and it took Ignis a fair share of self-control to not immediately toss a dagger at him and walk back inside without acknowledging him.

Instead he bowed – a custom by now. Noctis had never demanded something like this, and even King Regis had said that if there were no other people around Ignis was free to skip the formal greetings and such. Actually, Ignis really only did this to uphold the illusion of loyalty, the illusion of him actually considering Ardyn royalty. Whether Ardyn was aware of that or not was something that Ignis would likely never learn; because Ardyn would dispose of him if he slipped up. That much was certain.

“Well then. I assume I do not have to teach you how to use your newfound powers; they should be familiar in a sense.”

Ignis said nothing. The fact that Ardyn was still keeping his back turned to the advisor was highly suspicious – normally Ardyn quite enjoyed staring at people he spoke to. Although in the last few months that had only been Ignis, and he was rather certain that the Accursed had developed a thing for staring at Ignis until he got uncomfortable. He suspected that that had something to do with the day that Ardyn had found the documents that declared Ignis fit to take over the country after dawn.

Which made his refusal to turn around very suspicious.

“They are.”

“Good! Otherwise you would be running into quite a lot of trouble down the line, and we really can’t have that, can we?”

That sounded like a threat. Alas, nothing in the dark shifted, nothing came running and jumping at him. The Citadel lay as quiet and dead as it had ever since the night Insomnia fell; its sole two inhabitants standing before the steps leading up to it. Perhaps he was just imagining things.

“Now then, there is no need to glare a hole into my back. Foreign yet familiar though they may be, those are your powers as of now. Precisely what you--”

“Not… exactly, no.”

“I was _getting_ to that point.” Finally Ardyn turned around, a touch too dramatically for Ignis’ tastes, but seeing the man’s face made the situation less intense somehow. “Start small, don’t overdo it. The larger they are, the more likely they are to start lashing out. That _should_ sound familiar.”

Those were almost exactly the words they told new Kingsglaive and Crownsguard recruits whenever they got started on magic. They were not to overdo it and start small; small generally meant a flicker of fire or a small object materialising out of thin air. The bigger the object the more likely exhaustion-related injuries were. Ignis frowned as Ardyn walked past him.

“Well then, I’ll leave you to your training.”

“Where exactly are you going?”

“Somewhere of absolutely no consequence.”

* * *

Of course, expecting a Daemon to come with a manual or a way of communication was extremely silly in hindsight. He had seen Ardyn talking to Daemons in the last few months, but the longer he thought about it the more he started to realise that he had started considering Ardyn a functional human being – because Ardyn was the only human being he had been around lately. Speaking to Daemons was likely a sign of losing one’s mind, and Ignis remained crouched there with an angry scowl on his face as the goblins stared at him kind of nonplussed.

He’d spent a fair amount of time hunting them, and as strategist he knew what kinds of tactics they used out in the field, while hunting for prey. Alas, trying to communicate with a bunch of creatures that did seemingly not understand the human language was… harder than anticipated. It almost made him miss the ones that had shown the ability to speak the human language; the Naga at the bottom of Forciaugh Hollow, the bane of the Vesperpool Melusine, anything like these. At least those would have talked back, though Ignis had the creeping suspicion that they would be making fun of him just as Ardyn would be if he were here.

Instead, he shrugged at the confused creatures around him.

The Daemons of Insomnia had indeed changed their behaviour slightly ever since he awoke after returning from the Proving Grounds. At first they had always frozen around him, been wary and taken the earliest opportunity to flee once he seemed distracted enough. The Deathclaw had been an example – a terrifying example. Now those lowlife bottom-feeders were jumping around him as if he were nothing, with some of the higher tiers nearby. They accepted him as one of theirs.

He had checked his temperature. Even considered drawing blood. But other than a paleness that came from the lack of sunlight, Ignis was perfectly healthy. He could hear his mother and King Regis ask him to take care of himself and Prince Noctis, to get the two of them some sunlight even between schoolwork and other duties. There was absolutely nothing off about his heartbeat, he was as healthy as he could be despite the scar nearly splitting his face. Once he’d looked at his shoulder in the mirror and had instead been drawn to the almost too thin line. It was nothing like Gladio’s scar; the Shield had protected the prince with a surprising amount of pacifism for a guy who could easily snap the average citizen in half if he but wanted to. Ignis had instead been the aggressor in this case and for a terrifying second he thought about it too hard. What if this Deathclaw had been a Lucian citizen once?

He buried his face and groaned in frustration. Sitting there and staring at goblins was not getting him anywhere. One of them decided to jump onto his back.

“Gods above preserve my sanity… would you _please_ get off my back...”

Talking to Daemons.

This was a new low. Ignis groaned again as the creature jumped off him a minute or so later and then continued acting as if he weren’t even here. Not that goblins were complex or even dangerous; even back when they had just set out from Insomnia these creatures had been barely worse than a bothersome gnat. They attacked blindly and only got dangerous in large groups, but even then they were surprisingly simple. They were driven by instinct, a distinct hunger for flesh and blood – often they piled on injured hunters and tore them apart after these people managed to take out the larger fry. That was why most hunters worked in pairs of two, if not entire groups when it came to tracking down and taking care of a Daemon infestation. There were always goblins around, hoping to score some scraps when the bigger ones either made short work of the hunters, or to pick of weakened stragglers when the large fry fell.

Ignis reached forward and grabbed one of these hideous little things by the scruff and inspected it with a deep frown still on his face. His legs were going numb from being crouched that awkwardly but he held his position, frown only getting deeper when the Daemon managed to slip out of his grasp and tumbled away.

Starting small had never sounded like an insult to him; but right now it felt as if Ardyn was laughing at him from afar.

“… To think that you useless little things often rack up a higher kill count than the bigger ones. It is completely and utterly ridiculous. Yet here we are, and I know for a fact that you could easily tear me into pieces if I were injured or too weak to continue.”

Again, no reaction. Ignis settled for a sigh and slowly stood back up to pinch the bridge of his nose.

“Now then, how do you propose we proceed? I asked for this, so I ought to do as I claimed I would… but how?” The Daemons started gathering around him, staring up at him – not that Ignis saw that right now, with his eyes closed and his face turned towards the sky to think. “Listen to me, talking to you mindless little things as if you understand even a word of what I’m saying...”

The fact that goblins could chirp nearly made him jump a metre backwards. The next thing he saw was all of them sitting there staring up at him, and Ignis could only run a hand through his hair in confusion.

“… Alright, then.”

He gestured vaguely, and all these creatures followed his hand with their eyes.

“Good grief.”

It was like a bunch of murderous kittens. Not that he thought they were adorable or anything. In fact, Ignis was rather disgusted as their eyes were almost perfectly glued to his hand.

“… Turn around, please?” He kind of wiggled his hand around vaguely, and the goblins indeed turned. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

* * *

There were very few things that Ignis considered hilarious enough to burst into loud laughter. Only Noctis ever had the ability to truly make him laugh out in the open, a skill that many tried to replicate but failed to do so. Quite many people made bets on who would make the advisor laugh first; not that any of them ever succeeded. The only people that ever truly saw him laugh were people who had been around him when he was a child – his parents, King Regis, his uncle, Clarus Amicitia and Cor – or Noctis. In fact, Ignis really only smiled around the prince, up to the point that Prompto nearly figured out that they had been an item for a few years from photos of the two of them together.

Right now he wanted to laugh. Loudly.

This situation honestly wasn’t that funny – it was completely absurd. It would likely get him killed, judging by how Ardyn’s perplexed expression slowly turned more and more annoyed.

All Ignis did was wave his hand around a little, applied some magic pressure, and the Daemons that were surrounding the Accursed started moving in a circle around him. It went on like that for several more minutes, each passing second bringing Ignis closer and closer to a loud, unhappy laugh.

“Very funny,” Ardyn eventually sighed and shook his head. The Daemons immediately disengaged and left. “But it would seem that you have not been idle in the last week.”

The man did not look amused the slightest, and it cost Ignis a good amount of self-control to not crack a very unsettling grin at him. He’d not spoken to a human being in a week, had started talking to Daemons; all things considered he had not spoken to another human since he had snarled at Gladio back when he had grabbed Noctis to force them to let him and Ardyn go unscathed. He’d lost count of the days by now, but likely about seven months now.

“No thanks to you, though.” Ignis rolled his eyes. “You could have at least mentioned somehow that Daemons react to magic fluctuations.”

“Ah, I had faith in you figuring that out all by yourself.” Ardyn immediately dismissed Ignis’ thinly veiled complaint. “Considering your talent for magic I knew if given enough time you would get behind this.”

The second he had realised it it had started making sense. The Scourge was the bane of the planet, unnatural and choking. It had wiped out entire cities with naught left but empty houses that looked like its owners had just left; was more destructive than the Infernian lashing back at first. It had to have been a tremendous amount of magic that went into creating this sickness, and it was magic that still controlled it. All this really told him was that Ardyn was a lot more powerful than he would have anticipated from the moment the man revealed his alleged full name as Ardyn Izunia. The Chancellor of Niflheim was an odd duck but never one to harm people, an intelligent schemer and a cunning manipulator of sorts. Still, Ignis had learned about Niflheim. He knew that the chancellor had been widely regarded the best one since the beginning of the calendar.

Under him the country flourished as the army made progress, and Ignis now knew that all of this had been Ardyn’s doing and his plan from the very beginning. He wanted to make the country strong enough to force the gods to send forth their chosen, wanted to indirectly show his long dead brother that he was the better fit for the throne without ever directly sitting on it.

The Accursed was a horrid mage with a seething power that boiled within him, a man whose motivations were thoroughly vile according to the Cosmogony. A man who could only be defeated by one born to die, a person with the blessing of the gods, the power of the Oracle. The Immortal Accursed did not fit the image of the Imperial Chancellor – the Imperial Chancellor did not fit the Immortal Accursed. Yet Ardyn had donned both cloaks almost interchangeably with almost no effort on his end. The Accursed’s desires were the same as the chancellor’s, and Eos had never once realised that the true danger was not the empire itself but instead the unassuming man who did not even have control over the country’s military.

It only made sense that while he was able to manipulate people without magic he would have to rely on it for his actual allies. Not that… Daemons were compelling allies to begin with.

Ignis shrugged vaguely. “And what have you been doing, your Majesty?”

“Straight to the point as always. You really are no fun.” That dramatic sigh nearly made Ignis want to launch himself at the man and strangle him. “I’ve just been causing a _commotion_ , relax.”

“In Lestallum?” For a long, terrifying moment Ignis imagined his countrymen trying to fight off countless ways of Daemons that were sent against their makeshift walls, people screaming in the streets as the remnants of the Crownsguard, the Kingsglaive and the assortment of hunters tried to defend the helpless civilians.

“Not quite, not quite. I sent the rats burrowing in Niflheim running for their lives.”

Ignis hadn’t even thought that anyone in Niflheim survived. All he had seen had been the empty hallways of Zegnautus Keep and the production facility, the discarded clothing and the utter silence that held the country in its grip. The silent snowfall had been sombre, disturbed only by the sound of the machine going up in flames as he and Ardyn left the facility together. Truth be told, he had considered the nation dead together with their emperor, and he would have never cried a tear for them; manipulated or not, Niflheim had fed the fires of war all too willingly.

“Which brings us to my next point.”

That definitely sounded like trouble, but Ignis bowed.

“Now, there’s one fundamental thing about Niffs that you have to know – they did quite like being superior. They are far above asking for help, especially if they’re in the army. Unless, of course, civilian lives depend on it; they did not exactly care much for other civilians, but their own? Those civilians are important.”

“… So there’s at least one person from the military involved.”

“But of course. Take whatever Daemons you need. Find the Niffs.”

Ardyn turned back around to look up at the Citadel. Ignis straightened his back.

“Kill them in retaliation for what they did to your home, send them running to Lestallum bleeding and screaming and crying, I don’t care. But rough them up, will you?”

* * *

Judge, jury, executioner.

Ignis always considered himself a law-abiding citizen; it was important for a future advisor to know exactly where the boundaries lay. Then again, he also knew the methods of war, how to acquire information that he desired. He had no qualms to squeeze it out of people from the opposing side of the war, and he had to admit that breaking Caligo Ulldor’s arm before the man managed to escape him had been immensely satisfying after what the man had done to Jared Hester. Granted, Ignis had all but invited what the man then attempted to do to him in Altissia, but thanks to Ravus stepping in Ignis had made it out alive while Caligo Ulldor died in the streets of a nation they had subjugated.

The Niflheim army were far from civilians. They might have been rough on the defeated Kingdom of Lucis, but they had never rounded the people up and executed them – the case of the Hesters notwithstanding. All things considered, Niflheim treated subjugated nations well enough. They let them keep their traditions, whereas the Solheim Empire they were basing their conquests on had all but eradicated cultural differences. The Niffs might have sneered at Tenebraen spring festivals, might have not entirely approved of the Accordan tradition of offering the first catch of winter to Leviathan. The whole Bismarck superstition, the Duscaen thunder dances, the offering of Sylleblossoms when someone dear to one died. As far as Ignis knew there were very few such traditions in Niflheim, most of them replaced by hundreds of years of wars and conquest, though there had been the harvest week before eternal winter had eaten up the already cold country.

Those really were mostly civilians. He had been pursuing them slowly, been sending the off goblin out of the shadows for hours on end.

Some of the soldiers were carrying the children or wounded even though exhaustion was plain on their faces. The airship had crashed about four hours away from Lestallum. Ignis had considered wiping out the soldiers just for the hell of it. It had been the Niflheim army that had attacked Insomnia, the army that had beset Noctis at every step he took.

But, perhaps in a shocking moment of clarity, he had decided that he was not going to be the judge or the jury, least of all the executioner. The people of Lestallum, a colourful mix of Lucians, Accordans and Tenebraens were to decide what to do with these people. He just needed to make the Niffs actually go there.

They weren’t dumb.

Niflheim had been an oppressive might, and they had enjoyed their superiority for long. To see the once grand nation fallen like this made them all too aware that they had, even as civilians, been complicit in the murder of the previous King of Lucis and the previous Oracle, perhaps even been complicit in the death of the last Oracle. King Noctis and Prince Ravus would likely enact some measure of revenge to appease their people – and rightfully so. All of these people were aware of that as they trudged onwards, their crashed airship long out of their reach.

Ignis sent a Snaga forward to jump at the one who had been directing the people around, the youngest but clearly one who had been dispatched to Lucis before or after the fall of the country to control checkpoints or patrol one of the many bases that were now desolate. The next one was a few days of straight marching away; Ardyn had absolutely had a hand in the place the airship had landed before running out of fuel. Flying Daemons were rare but they existed, and Niffs likely knew how to avoid them when in the air. But Daemons sent by the Accursed were persistent if nothing else.

The soldier caught the Snaga mid-jump with his gunblade and staggered.

“This stopped being funny a long time ago, wherever you are!”

The group of Niffs stopped, some of the other military men and women sticking their heads together to discuss something. One of the uniformed walked over to the young soldier, checked over his bandages – he’d likely been injured before he even came to Lucis. They started urgently whispering something until the younger hoisted his gunblade back up with a grunt.

“Can’t say. I really can’t say.”

That was when Ignis caught the flash not too far away. It was a bright light, crystalline and wonderfully painful as he saw it for that split second. Someone nearby was summoning weapons. The Niffs had caught it too, urgent whispering breaking out among them. That was the light of someone summoning a weapon, something so familiar that Ignis held his breath. There were Glaives nearby – or Crownsguard.

Worst case, Noctis was nearby.

He considered withdrawing as the Niffs started lowly talking about how to get away from whatever it was that was stalking them and whoever it was who was summoning weapons not too far away.

That was the moment Ignis decided to play the devil’s advocate. He had been planning on delivering the Niffs to Lestallum anyway, and Glaives meant that they could call for backup. It meant that the civilians and soldiers alike would wind up with the makeshift joint government of the world; a government that resented Niffs but was also lacking them because they were considered wiped out.

Ignis leaned against the tree he had been hiding behind, his breath still held as he folded his hands.

Then he focused, called upon that still unfamiliar magic that he now controlled. The Daemons all around him, even the ones that had not been following him thus far but had been around just in case he stopped stalking these people, perked up. That focused silence was choking, and he swore he heard a familiar laugh somewhere in the distance, the same direction that the way too bright flash of a weapon being summoned had come from. Light travelled so incredibly far in the dark.

Everything was waiting for his command, and the Niff soldiers up ahead started getting frantic. That was the silence before something terrible happened on a battlefield; though they had always been the ones deploying the horrors on the battlefield as test. No MTs would be storming in, Ignis definitely did not control a Cerberus or a Diamond Weapon.

“Attack them. Rough them up. Make them _scream.”_

* * *

At first the Niffs had been surprisingly quiet. The civilians made sure the children were quiet and held their own tongues while the soldiers moved in. Ignis finally caught a glimpse at these battered men and women and was reminded of the way the Crownsguard had looked after the fall of Insomnia.

Part of him was oddly satisfied when he saw those parallels. The Niffs deserved that.

Then he caught who the youngest on that field was, still clad in Niff armour and heavily bandaged. The same young man that had attacked them at the Norduscaen Blockage, and Ignis immediately understood what the bandages were for. They covered the burns left from when Loqi Tummelt’s engine went up in flames. They hadn’t bothered checking if the Niff was alive back then, they had assumed him dead. He was almost tempted to make one of the Daemons attack him and actually kill him, but Ignis resisted that temptation.

Eventually he had to send in more and more, so something slipped past the soldiers and managed to swipe at the civilians. Still they remained quiet, other than the hissing of the Daemons. That sound was not enough to draw in the Lucians not too far away – after all the hissing was normal. The Daemons were all around.

It took one of these things nearly killing a civilian for a kid to start screaming in fear. He was still leaning against the tree, almost tempted to cover his ears. Those were civilians. Civilians who might have opposed the war with Lucis but never gained enough strength to uproot the emperor. Civilians who might have had a superiority complex but would have treated the other nations with silence rather than ignorance.

At least the Lucians with their pretty little lightshow finally reacted. It took them about five minutes to arrive on the scene, and Ignis once more held his breath from his position.

Those weren’t Glaives.

“What the… people? Daemons? All the way out here!?”

The Niffs all huddled together while the soldiers moved, still trying to drive back the Daemons. More and more poured in, all of them the lower tiers that Ignis had called in.

“Prom those… aren’t just people… look at the uniforms.”

“… Niffs?”

Prompto and Iris. Of all people who could have possibly been here, nearby, as he stalked these Niffs on Ardyn’s command, it had to have been those two. Ignis covered his mouth with both his hands, panic surging through his body. If they looked this way, or somehow figured out where he was, it was over. They’d drag him back to Lestallum kicking and screaming. Toss him before Noctis and he knew his defiance would fade immediately. He’d not been separated from Noctis that long in his life, and just the mere _thought_ of them finding him and taking him back _home_ sounded so appealing that he nearly wanted to scream at the skies that the gods had won. That he didn’t give a damn, that he would find a way or kill himself if he _fucking_ had to.

“Shit, aren’t you the guy from the Norduscaen Blockade?”

“Prompto, does that really matter right now? Ah, incoming!”

The sound of a weapon being summoned, and suddenly it all fell into place. Prompto was training Iris in how to summon. Which meant that Noctis had cut the connection and at some point given the empty space to Iris. It made sense, considering that Iris had always wanted to fight alongside the members of the Crownsguard she had gotten to know as she grew up around the Citadel, alongside the people who had protected her when the city fell. She had sworn that she would take care of Talcott now – Ignis was almost happy that she had gotten this far.

An urgent argument began, but he missed it as static started filling his ears again. This was not a vision, this was him on the verge of a hysteric breakdown. Noctis had replaced him with Iris. _Noctis had replaced him with Iris._

The sound of people fighting Daemons, with the civilians finally panicking fully as one of the military fell to the snapping claws of a Snaga. Claws tearing through flesh, bones snapping. Ignis was slowly breathing through his nose, his hands still covering his mouth. He needed to focus. Those Daemons were going out of control; they had not been given the order to kill. This wasn’t roughing up.

Indeed, for a split second everything stopped again – the Niffs, Prompto, Iris, the Daemons. He slowly lifted his hands from his mouth, the static slowly but steadily ebbing away.

“Prompto! Lestallum! Get the Marshal, Ravus, _anyone! Go!”_

“Don’t kill,” he whispered into the dark, “don’t kill them. Let the Chosen’s… let the Chosen’s plaything _go._ ”

Prompto was a good runner. The Daemons instead continued to circle Iris and the Niffs.

“If we make it out of this alive, Lucian…”

“Fatalistic, aren’t we?” He could hear Iris’ confident smirk, a trademark of her family. Just like her father, her brother. “Prompto’s good at running. Lestallum’s an hour away and he can run that distance in half an hour. If we’re lucky Aranea’s back and they can drop in via airship. If they drop in Prince Ravus, we’re gonna make it out alive.”

The Niffs all murmured something, and Ignis heard some of them reloading their weapons. Some civilians said that they hadn’t had much training but asked for the extra guns the soldiers carried. The Daemons quivered, continuing their circling.

“The High Commander’s alive…?”

“And you guys’ll be too, if you stop being so fatalistic and just _hope_ , Commander, uhh.”

“Tummelt. Loqi Tummelt.”

“Iris Amicitia. Nice to meet you all – let’s make it home alive!”

Cautiously Ignis peeked around the tree. Iris stood there in front of these people like a saviour, the weapon she had summoned at her side. She definitely looked like she was ready to give it her all.

Ignis weighed his options. Either he could continue the hide and seek and wait until the reinforcements arrived – about an hour, perhaps less, if Iris’ estimation was correct. The Niffs were mostly in fighting condition now, safe for a few who were standing around the ten or so children that were with the group. The military men and women were exhausted, Loqi Tummelt was heavily leaning against his gunblade as his bandages slowly came undone to reveal horrid burns on his face.

That wasn’t a fighting force safe for Iris. This was pathetic.

Ignis took a deep, deep breath.

He knew for a fact that Noctis would consider him possessed. Knowing Noctis it meant that Iris was aware of this; giving her a fight worthy of how she held herself right now meant coming out of his hiding space. He made the Daemons circle faster, more frantically. Tummelt growled.

“Come out already, I know you’re out there, controlling them! Show yourself, whichever one of the scientists you are!”

He exhaled slowly. Steadily.

Raised his voice.

“I’m afraid I am not a scientist.”

Iris gasped as Ignis stepped out from behind the tree. “No way…!”

“But if it is a _Scientia_ you’re looking for, then I am your man.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HERES YOUR FUN FACT  
> i wasnt planning on having the same character be the main pov for two chapters in a row for like  
> another 3 or so chapters maybe
> 
> but this is almost 7k words long so i HAD to cut it off  
> next chapters gonna be ignis again. boy oh boy!


	11. Perhaps you shouldn't have burnt all these bridges down.

Most people would have expected him to never pick up a weapon. An advisor’s mettle was needed on political battlefields rather than seeing actual combat; and even then he would have been expected to sit on the sidelines as strategist. Ignis had decided that by the time he was 14 he was going to do whatever it took to help Noctis, and by the time he was 16 he had started training alongside the Crownsguard and they all learned to not underestimate the almost unassuming son of House Scientia in the training halls.

Comparatively, Iris Amicitia was expected to be more ladylike. The Amicitias were the family of the highest standing right underneath the Lucis Caelums, stalwart protectors. But unless something happened to Gladio, Iris was absolutely free to do whatever she pleased. And high ladies were generally expected to act like one; Iris being much younger than Gladio and never having gotten to know their mother notwithstanding. Iris instead chose to be herself; proper and almost scarily prim when she needed to be, but affectionate and caring when she was among people she knew and liked. Eventually her father and brother decided for her, and perhaps in an effort to keep her safe from the war beyond the Wall, they never trained her. Iris was mostly self-taught.

They were both prodigies, all things considered.

“Ignis…”

They weren’t close by any means, far from it. She was Gladio’s little sister, someone who was a friend of his friend; a fellow noble. There had been exactly one instance of him speaking with Iris by herself, during a ball of some sort where she had grown tired from being the perfect little Lady Amicitia, and Ignis himself had simply withdrawn somewhat because even he needed a moment to breathe sometimes. They had wound up complaining about other nobles to each other, a smile on his face and she laughing until they parted ways and returned to the fray; Iris to find her same-aged noble friends and Ignis to return to Noctis and Gladio.

Still, he bowed to her, very well aware of how he had started adopting a flair for dramatic and ironic bows around Ardyn. Perhaps that could play into keeping up the illusion of him being possessed somehow, a puppet on strings rather than painfully aware and acting out of his own free will. The Niffs were all hesitating, clearly confused by a Lucian leading a bunch of Daemons when it had previously been their scientists.

“Lo and behold; it only takes darkness eternal for you to get what you always wanted!” That was… disgustingly Ardyn-esque, and the part of him that still urged him to go _home_ was screeching at him to stop acting like this, let Iris take him out, bludgeon him to death or drag him to Lestallum. “It is just too bad that you waste your newfound powers and freedom on vermin like _them.”_

A shuffle, and even Iris’ expression darkened for a moment.

The world hated the Niffs. The Niffs were fully aware of that – yet here stood a single Lucian facing her own countryman with Niff soldiers at her side.

“You’re not Ignis.” She sounded so _certain_ of it, it made the lead that was settling in the pit of his stomach only heavier.

He shrugged at her, trying to keep his expression amused. He was quite literally channelling Ardyn’s mannerisms for this; Ignis had never before in his life felt so dirty. Well, he had, back when he had turned his weapon on Noctis, nearly crushing the man he loved more than life itself instead of protecting him like he had sworn. “Fancy words that mean nothing in the end; we’ve never truly known each other. ‘Tis true we are both noble-born, but would we ever have met were it not for your brother and Noctis’ connection? How can you be so certain that I am not acting under my own free will?”

Iris took a step forward, breaking formation. The Daemons were not attacking, after all, and she was trying to get a closer look at him. Some sort of hint that he had been tortured into compliance, something that gave away one of Ardyn’s illusion, something that told her he had been brainwashed and turned against Noctis and Lucis with that. All she likely got to see was the scar on his face, the wild look in his eyes even as he wore perfectly pristine clothing as always.

“Because Ignis would never do something like this. Whatever you are, I’ll make sure to beat it out of him, and bring him home.”

_Home._

He wanted to.

But the second he gave up he would have to let the will of the gods come to pass, and if there was one similarity between him and Ardyn – then it had to be that they were both rather unhappy with the fate that the gods laid out for the planet or the other people involved with this. Ravus and Ignis had gotten along because their goals overlapped for the time being, they had been after something similar enough that they had teamed up. Ardyn’s and Ignis’ goals were wildly different from what little he knew, but Ignis was not going to let the Astrals have Noctis like this. He’d find a way to send Ardyn to hell without sacrificing Noctis, even if history decried him the Accursed’s right hand man for all eternity.

He kept the grin but put a finger on his lips. The Daemons stopped moving altogether, their circling the battlefield ceasing in a matter of seconds. Iris stopped too, her eyes betraying the fact that she was rather scared. Still, she kept her head held high, her grip on her weapon was solid and confident. Just like her brother and father were, but different somehow. She was determined to protect these people. The soldiers who had been actively oppressing the other people, who had roamed the countryside of Lucis in search of its wayward king. The civilians whose silence had made them accomplices in the atrocities that Niflheim committed.

After Jared’s death Iris had agreed with Noctis and Prompto and Gladio. The Niffs would have to pay for what they had done, and even Ignis had nodded back then. They had been on the run for so long it had started making him anxious – a tactician who had one eye on the road and one on the skies; one on the battlefield and one on the eventual restoration of the country and what would have to happen in this part. A king’s eye, much more so than the emotionally driven Noctis had, though he did not doubt for a second that Noctis would eventually learn how to be a king.

“Confident. But perhaps you underestimated me all along, Iris.”

“I never parse people wrong, and whatever you’re doing, it’s not something Ignis would. You’re being used, aren’t you?”

“Perhaps I simply acquired a taste for hunting down vermin like them in the dark.”

“Ardyn’s _using you_. Open your eyes, Ignis; it’s me!”

For a second even this part of Lucis seemed to hold its breath. The Niffs did not know the full picture, likely had not known the chancellor had been the driving force behind all of this until the decided to drive them out of whatever space they had hidden themselves in. The soldiers knew that this was Scientia, the strategist who had caused them some rather humiliating losses as they chased the wayward king of Lucis across the countryside. Iris was glaring at him now, her lips in a thin line, but still confident enough that she could take Ignis to Lestallum and fix this.

Ignis settled for shooting her a wide smile. “Oh, I can see you _all too clearly.”_

With that he gave the command to attack. The whirlwind of lesser Daemons sprung forward, the civilians screaming but those that had been given guns still shooting to protect the unarmed. The soldiers moved in and intercepted whatever they could, unable to get to Iris’ side.

Iris herself was facing down the older ones, the ones that reacted less to Ignis’ commands. He had kept a healthy distance between them and made a point in smiling at her as he waved his hand a little just before something jumped at her.

He wasn’t here to fight her. Iris swung her mace with a yell; surprisingly agile for such a heavy weapon. Then again she had always been rather strong, even if she never quite looked like it. She was taller now, wiry instead of simply small. Her clothes were practical, seemingly hand-me-downs from someone of the Kingsglaive – it wasn’t a standard issue Kingsglaive uniform, and it was not her size. It gave her a wild look, the look of someone who had survived the fall of Insomnia with nary a scratch thanks to all the people helping her. Now it was her time to repay them in kind, even if she used it to protect the people she hated. But something about the darkness had changed the way people thought.

Those in Lestallum knew the importance of huddling together, of working even with people they hated. Perhaps the Niffs could learn the same – and that seemed to be the conclusion she had reached. That was why she stood there, whirling around and making certain nothing bigger than necessary got past her.

Eventually she roared something above the cackle of Daemons. “That all you got? The real Ignis would be much better at this, y’know?”

Iris was making this harder than necessary. Barely ten minutes had passed and she had already managed to cut through the larger ones, was swatting the lesser ones that now jumped in to protect their commander away.

Ignis took a step backwards.

He didn’t want to actually harm her, but he could not allow her to get to him. Again the reasonable part of him begged him to give up and let her take him back to Lestallum.

He snuffed that part out as he slowly extended a hand towards her.

It was easy enough to control Daemons; they were surprisingly easy to force under his command. Perhaps that was how Ardyn had so effortlessly managed to build an army of them once he learned how to control them.

Magic on the other hand still felt unfamiliar, wrong. It took him a moment for the spark to catch fire, a second moment to hurl a fireball at Iris. She wasn’t a Kingsglaive, Ignis wasn’t a Kingsglaive. They did not toss fire around as if it were nothing. Even the more physically inclined Glaives like Nyx Ulric had learned how to almost effortlessly sling fire and thunder around; the more magically inclined ones had called upon ice. He clearly remembered that day Crowe Altius in the training room had taken a step forwards, towards her adoptive brother and his best friend. The way frost had bloomed around her feet, earning her loud praise, typical loud yells of congratulations; raised eyebrows from the prince.

Iris stared at him as the fireball whisked past her face, unnaturally green and oh so very _wrong._ It almost made the waves of discomfort that went through him amusing; Iris likely knew that Noctis had severed Ignis’ access to the magic of kings.

No one in Lestallum knew what Ardyn was.

Ignis was the only person alive who knew, even just vaguely enough, what on earth drove the Accursed. By all means, Ignis should not have been able to use magic, and Iris’ shock was enough time for him to send forth something else.

He’d thought it would be an Iron Giant. Simple enough.

The second he saw the flash of fire he knew he himself had miscalculated.

A Red Giant stood between him and Iris now, and for a split second he felt panic surge through him. He repeated his commands hurriedly, seeing as the lesser Daemons had managed to pluck a soldier down and were getting dangerously close to the civilians again. But that Red Giant… Ignis had not managed to fully control these. They did as they pleased and generally ignored his call to combat too; at least the ones lumbering about Insomnia always did. He stared at the creature with wide his, his arm dropping and the flash of magic that had been sparking above his hand vanishing immediately.

“Good gods...”

Then it started swinging just as more Daemons started popping up. The horrible crunch of metal as the Iron Giant he had been trying to get to this battlefield arrived.

He could call that Iron Giant off, but the Red Giant… He backed away as far as he could, saw the flash of Iris using her weapon.

Then he realised his time was up. There were two airships closing in, the sound almost grating on his ears. For nearly a year he had been on the lookout for these, had even learned to differentiate between Aranea’s and simply an imperial dropship. Aranea’s airship and an imperial dropship were both closing in on the battlefield, and Ignis stared at the sky until a bright light pierced the darkness.

He had no idea who on earth could be using magic that the Oracle used before she had died, but he took that as sign to run.

“Ignis!”

The Red Giant went down as Ignis started running, and Iris was held up by the Iron Giant. He fled into the night before anyone else caught a glimpse of where he was going until he had to stop and breathe in. His heart was wildly hammering in his chest – there was a fair chance someone would come running after him once they took care of the Daemons he had left behind without clear commands.

Indeed, after a few moments of silence except for his desperate attempts to breathe and think straight, he heard steps. Before he could react someone had put a hand on his mouth, pulled him backwards until he was leaning against the person.

“How reckless of you, leaving your allies behind.”

He _hated_ the fact he relaxed into Ardyn’s grip like this. But he was relieved that it was the Accursed rather than anyone else right now. He wouldn’t get dragged to Lestallum, wouldn’t have to face what he had just done for a while yet. Ignis never wanted to be judge, jury and executioner – but he also didn’t want to face trials right now. Not while he was still so far away from a conclusion, a hint, something, anything that he could use to change Noctis’ fate.

“But you performed well enough. Come now – back _home_ with you.”

* * *

Once upon a time this garden had been a very relaxing place. He remembered spending afternoons here with Noctis before the accident; the prince’s head resting against his shoulder as he read him something. After he returned from Tenebrae Ignis had made a point in avoiding this place, for gardens seemed to make Noctis uneasy until one evening the prince stood beside his bed, pulled him out and along. Ignis made certain they dodged the guards in the halls until he asked where Noctis was taking him, and the prince had only shaken his head. It was the garden again, this time under the starlit sky.

“Tell me about the Syldra constellation again,” he had whispered when he had pulled Ignis into the garden, buried his face in Ignis’ back. They were found the next morning leaning against a tree, fast asleep as the sun rose.

The tree was barely more than a husk of dead wood by now, though it was not the darkness that had killed it. Ignis slowly drew a hand over the burnt bark, noted the bullets stuck in the tree. He knew there would be nothing there but dark clouds blotting out the sun, particles dancing through the air, but still he turned his head to the sky once more. The wind had died, just as everything else in this garden had, and Ignis was fairly certain that part of him had died with it.

He had avoided this part of the Citadel for a very specific reason. This was where he had effectively grown up together with Noctis; this garden in particular had quite a lot of things attached to it. The first time Noctis acted like himself after the traumas of the Marilith attack and after Tenebrae. He could almost picture Noctis again, now twenty and just a mere week before the terms of the peace treaty were offered first by the very man who was likely carving out the Founder King’s face on every statue across the Citadel. That radiant smile despite the loss they had suffered, Noctis’ careful optimism that they could win the war eventually. The good guys always won, after all, he had said with that smile, and for a second Ignis had seen the bottomless anxiety in those wonderful blue eyes. Then Noctis had pulled him in after making certain no one was around – after all this was horribly indecent.

“And once the war’s over, I’m marrying you. Screw what the council says.”

Of course, that would have never happened; it seemed as if the divine were rightfully destroying that pipe dream with King Regis calling for his son later and announcing that he was to be engaged to Lady Lunafreya Nox Fleuret of Tenebrae as part of a peace treaty between Niflheim and Lucis. The war would end, and Ignis knew all along that Noctis would be happy, even if in that very moment the prince had been so shocked by this declaration that he could only nod at his father. After all the prince loved Lady Lunafreya. She was not a horrible match; the two of them cared about each other very deeply. The bond of Chosen and Oracle, something that the gods had set in stone. They would banish the darkness together, the prophecy called.

Ignis curled his hand into a fist and drove it against the dead bark. He barely registered the pain that shot through his arm when he did so – he was, however, painfully aware of the strangled sound that had escaped him.

Prophecies.

Part of him wanted to march straight to the waiting room before the throne room. He wanted to tear down the murals and pictures that told the same prophecy as the Cosmogony did, wanted to throw the pieces out of the windows with a scream. Wanted to demand the gods face him, wanted to present them a way to let Noctis live.

He felt electrified all of a sudden, his fingers digging into the charred remains of the tree. Just as electrified he had felt the day the prince had closed the distance between them and pulled him down into a kiss. The same kind of electrified he had felt when Noctis laughed and said that once the war ended he’d tell the council off and do as he pleased.

Another strangled sound escaped him as he recalled those vivid images of Noctis smiling at him, those terrifyingly vivid visions of what was to come. Noctis, pinned to the throne.

Ignis was alive and sobbing, tears streaming down his face.

The garden remained dead and silent.

* * *

“I would have thought someone who managed to defeat _Gilgamesh_ to be in better shape than that.”

Ignis leaned against the Trident of the Oracle with a glare. He slowly wiped the blood off his chin – thankfully it was only a scratch and would stop bleeding soon enough.

He wasn’t entirely certain why he had challenged Ardyn to a training match. Perhaps he was trying to get back some measure of familiarity; while on the road they had sparred quite a lot. Even with Aranea once she had decided to drop in whenever she caught them nearby while they were out in Lucis. Ardyn and Noctis used a very familiar fighting style, but there was something undeniably abhorrent about seeing the powers of Lucis misused in such a way. Although they likely were Ardyn’s to begin with, long corrupted over the course of time and by the Scourge he carried.

“I never claimed I was good at fighting without magic. I am not a Shield.”

“No, you really are not.”

Ardyn shrugged, the weapon that he had conjured up looking eerily familiar. That had to be something created in the likelihood of the Sword of the Mystic, though Ignis wasn’t entirely certain. It changed form rather rapidly, and he knew Ardyn was merely playing around.

Lucian royalty was powerful, more powerful than most others. And Ardyn was ancient, had a long time to hone his skills and was not beset by the Crystal slowly but steadily draining his life out of him.

“But I do have to admit you are more interesting than the brutes. All of them failed at what you succeeded with.”

Ignis shook his head. “I’ve asked before but… care to elaborate?”

He wasn’t expecting an answer, and for a long moment it looked as if Ardyn was about to lunge at Ignis again.

Then the weapon the man was holding shattered into what looked like red glass. For a split moment he saw dark wisps before these shards vanished, and Ignis furrowed his brows a little. Illusory magic was not something he would have expected to ever surface; he’d read about it of course, but it had been called a dead art. Something that had vanished before the Founder King’s reign, something that had vanished during the death throes of Solheim.

“Magic is a most fickle thing.” Ardyn almost casually snapped his fingers and nearly immediately his entire arm was seemingly engulfed by a shroud of darkness that wavered about. “You can count those who have a natural aptitude for raw spellcasting on one hand. Talent and skill go hand in hand, but you cannot push yourself beyond those limits. Go too far and...”

Ignis lunged out of the way when he felt a familiar crackle underneath his feet. Just a split moment after he got out of the way ice bloomed where he had stood, small chunks of ice appearing out of seemingly nowhere. He shot the Accursed an angry glare, but all the man did was laugh.

“Go too far and there’s a fair chance it spills over, bursts out of you and takes you and your surroundings out. You should know that much.”

Ignis had studied it diligently, just as with everything else. Stasis was what they called it, an almost explosive outburst of magic before the complete inability to do so settled in for a while. It was not unlike the fits of fever that someone who was just getting used to magic was, though stasis usually displayed differently.

Prompto had gone into it exactly once after showing off how good he was at summoning his weapons. He had thrown up for hours, writhed in agony when his stomach finally decided that it was completely emptied of anything at all, and had then decided to never do it again when he was so ravenous the next day that he made the biggest eater of them all wonder if Prompto had been possessed by the spirit of a vengeful vacuum or something of the like. Gladio had avoided it, but Shields generally were trained to not immediately drop useless when they entered stasis; according to reports he had read Clarus Amicitia started acting like a machine made for protecting the then Prince Regis, unable to differentiate between no, potential and actual threat.

Noctis generally just fell quiet, tossing and turning when he lay down. Cold sweat, asking people not to leave him in that phase.

Ignis himself crashed, suddenly aware of the weight on his shoulders just like Noctis was whenever he entered stasis. Not enough to hold him back; even when in stasis Ignis managed to _function_ , somehow, but enough to make people worry about him. Slight nausea. The shrill static that filled his ears.

“Of course I know that much,” he muttered into Ardyn’s general direction, and the Accursed sighed.

“Well then. Advisors who take the battlefield are rare; even rarer are ones who manage to control magic. No Shield ever relied on what their kings loan them to help with their weaknesses. You on the other hand all but eliminated most of your weaknesses with clever applications of it. You are not infallible, of course. No one is, neither mortal nor the divine can claim such. But on a battlefield you hold an advantage over people due to your almost boundless tactical capabilities, quick thinking and unnaturally steep energy reservoir for all things magical. If I hadn’t kept track of the Scientias I would ask if you are the bastard offspring of either Oracles or Lucian royalty. But of course you are not.”

“...” Ignis frowned as he leaned against the trident again

“Unfortunately there is one thing that overly relying on magic brings.”

Ardyn lunged forwards with that, a weapon suddenly appearing in his hands. Ignis had not the time to react to what looked like a warp, and fell backwards with a surprised yelp.

“Slow reaction times in normal combat.”

“This was hardly normal!” The advisor spat as he jumped back on his feet.

“Oh, perhaps not the way _you_ learned it. Alas, it is about time you learned something new, and most of your opponents can warp. So get used to it.”

* * *

The apartment complex had collapsed.

Ignis wasn’t sure what he had been expecting; it had been too close to the Citadel for anything else. Part of him had perhaps hoped that the empty apartment would still be there, dusty and desolate and free of all belongings but filled to the brim with memories. But the half of the building that Noctis’ apartment had been in had collapsed, debris and scorch marks telling of a fight that he had missed.

Had Nyx Ulric been there when this place had gone down? Was he the man responsible for these scorch marks? Had it been the Old Wall he had allegedly roused once the Ring of the Lucii accepted him as king for a night?

For a moment he considered getting the Ring of the Lucii and asking the old kings if they at least gave Nyx Ulric a place among them. But, all things considered, the probably didn’t. Nyx had died a fool’s death all on his own in a city in ruins, with the Oracle he had been supposed to protect on the run. And her run would come to an end in Altissia, at the Altar of the Tidemother.

He could hear the rain hitting the tide around them, hitting the stone. He heard Ravus’ soft sobbing as they remained there. His head full of static, Noctis unconscious, Lunafreya dead. Heard Ardyn disguised as Gladio call for him and Noctis.

Ignis rubbed his face. He was delirious from lack of sleep. They had been infrequent before, but ever since that day he had stood in the garden in the Citadel that he and Noctis had been in so much they had started up more and more often until they all but tormented him every night. Those split-second flashes of Iris before the Red Giant cut her off, the terrified look Prompto had given her and the Niffs before he bolted. Noctis, pinned against the throne with a sword stuck in his chest. And then last night it had stopped at this vision, but instead of waking him up as usual Noctis had raised his head.

Black blood, completely empty eyes, and even through the dreamscape Ignis had felt his own heartbeat stop completely as Noctis then asked why he had let him die. Why Ignis had _lied._

He’d been restless despite the exhaustion since, and started wandering old and well-known paths.

All those memories, the good and the bad, now strewn across the street, buried somewhere in the rubble. It felt so fatally final when he turned his back to that sight after what felt like hours. He heard that voice asking him if he was planning on giving up again in the back of his head, felt it weighing down his heart as he started walking again.

“I won’t,” he told the Daemons that were getting out of his way as he marched back to the city centre, “I won’t. I just need time.”

Noctis had joked that Ignis with his spellbound daggers looked like someone dancing with fire. Ignis often humoured the prince even though they were in their preparations for the departure to Altissia at long last. He traced arcs of fire through the air in Costlemark to split the puddings that barred their way. Tossed Noctis a burning dagger whose flames died down the second they went into the prince’s hands. How the flames started again when Noctis tossed it and nailed a ronin in the face, how they slowly but steadily ate through the fabric. How they crackled even in the rain as he barely avoided a flurry of brute strikes and showers of electricity. How the fire still crackled even in the deadly silence in Zegnautus Keep.

He sent a green fireball into the distance. It hit something – something that did not make a noise – and for a second the area up ahead lit up in the eerie light. He drew his daggers, set them alight as he normally did. Finally the flames started crackling, a familiar sound that was comforting despite the colour being off. Everything was off.

Ignis danced with fire, but right now he more felt like a necromancer slowly gliding through the night.

* * *

The next day the ruins of the apartment complex burned. Perhaps the light of that bonfire was visible even in Lestallum, and Ignis laughed.


	12. the balancing act on top of the beacon of hope

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> disclaimer right away; i dont think i can keep up the pace at which im putting out chapters because im starting my job today (or uh. tuesday for anyone not in CET at any rate) and i dunno if i should take my laptop with me to my mothers for easter.
> 
> i do hope i can finish ch13 before that though.  
> this ones mostly... set-up. the next one's gonna be Fun.  
> capital f fun.

A commotion had started by the time the airships left.

Noctis was not entirely certain how he had managed to disperse it by the time they returned, not even half an hour later.

He’d spent a good deal of his travels around Lucis seeing what the empire had done to his country not just since the hostile takeover of the capital, but also during the entire war. There were deep scars left in the country, in the hearts of the people. Noctis himself had often thought about marching right to Niflheim, to Gralea, after finding Luna and gaining the support of the gods. He wanted to crush them, leave nothing of them but dust.

Ravus immediately ordered the civilians to be taken somewhere isolated from the Lucians, the Accordans, the Tenebraens and left with them. The soldiers were barely standing as they were, but all of them were looking at the king of their enemy nation with nothing on their faces. No contempt. No hatred. No guilt, either. Not even Loqi Tummelt, one of the prime examples of the Niff superiority complex, looked like he was looking down on Noctis right now. The people of the once grand Empire of Niflheim were now standing before King Noctis of Lucis, the very nation they had driven to the brink of ruin, awaiting his judgement.

Iris was standing beside them, blood running down her face and dripping off her chin, but she swatted Gladio away. She said she wanted to hear what her king had to say about the fate of these people she had fought to protect. _Then_ she could lie down and have someone bandage her up. Noctis definitely caught that grateful glint in some of the soldiers’ eyes.

He had been dead set on punishing the people and especially the military of Niflheim. Wanted to repay them in kind for taking his home, his throne, his beloved father. He had burned with the desire to get revenge for what they had done. But now that he was looking at these people, he found that the fire had died within his chest. There was nothing left but ashes where his desire for vengeance had been, and there was nothing he could do to rekindle it. Those people new what they had done, those of the military as well as the civilians.

Therefore, much to everyone’s surprise, King Noctis of Lucis merely closed his eyes with a deep sigh.

“Many of my… countrymen and many of the people here in this city would love to repay you for what you have done. But I see you are very well aware of that. Besides, circumstances have… changed. This is no longer a situation that pits us against you and yours. The war would have ended with the advent of darkness anyway.” He opened his eyes again and shook his head. “I cannot promise that it will be easy. I cannot promise that you won’t be met with contempt, open hatred. What I, as King of Lucis, can promise you is that… no harm will befall you while you recover. Make your choices once you and your civilians are healed. But for the time being, let Lestallum be your haven. Aranea, can you take them to where Ravus took the civilians?”

Iris nodded, clearly pleased. But her movements slowed down significantly, until she could barely keep her eyes open. It was her brother who grabbed her by the shoulders.

“Young lady, you’re going to see a doctor immediately. Prom, a hand, please?”

“Y-Yes! Of course!”

The bubble of people dispersed around him, and Noctis exhaled slowly when he felt someone put a hand on his shoulder.

“Your father would be proud of you,” Cor’s voice was uncharacteristically quiet. “That was a feat fit for a king.”

Noctis sighed. “You think so?”

“Not many leaders would extend a helping hand to the people who brought down their country.”

Noctis had effectively grown up with Cor. There were few people who could claim that they had served three kings, and fewer still who had often been the butt of many a childish prank. Cor was unshakeable, an immovable pillar of support even through the hardest of times. He had pushed Noctis forward, given him a direction when he had felt lost after the fall of Insomnia, had herded the remnants of the Crownsguard around. He definitely wasn’t used to people praising him for his decisions, least of all Cor saying that something Noctis brought up was a good decision.

Cor furrowed his brows a little. “If you permit me the curiosity… why did you not send them out again?”

“… It’s not like they brought the darkness upon us. Sure, they had a hand in how hard it hit all of us in the end but… I seriously doubt that a Niff commander ordered the world plunged into eternal darkness. Those people were wounded. I couldn’t… send them out again like this. Not while Iris bled for them. If they want to leave once they’re better, we’ll let them. But for the time being Iris protected them – and I trust her judgement.”

* * *

It became a balancing act. The people weren’t happy with harbouring Niffs in Lestallum – understandable. Noctis himself wasn’t too happy whenever he thought about it for too long. Every time he started doubting himself and his choices, Cor would inevitably find him brooding and offer words of encouragement.

He’d been his father’s second bodyguard, the extended hand where King Regis and Clarus did not reach. Cor had spent countless hours chasing after the wayward prince and his advisor, had learned all the ways through the Citadel in such an efficient way that Ignis eventually had to figure out a way to get out of the Citadel. It took Cor until the day Noctis moved out into the apartment to learn how exactly Ignis had managed sneaking the prince out, and the man had clapped his hand on Ignis’ shoulder with a laugh. Called him crafty and that Prince Noctis surely was in good hands with someone as devilishly clever as that.

Noctis wasn’t used to Cor paying that much attention to him and his choices. In a sense it made the yawning gap that Ignis’ betrayal had left feel slightly better. It did not lessen the sting and fears, but it did help him keep a clear mind.

“The people aren’t happy.”

“They weren’t happy with the peace treaty either.”

“Yeah, but they do have a point. The peace treaty was a scam. Those Niffs could be more trouble than they’re worth.”

“Would you say that much to their faces?”

Noctis always lost these arguments. Cor always, infallibly, said that Noctis had made the right decision and sooner or later the people would realise that. They would have realised the same with the peace treaty if it had never been an act. Peace for the people weighed heavier than Lucian pride; keeping what remained of humanity alive and together was more important than kicking those who had once kicked them in return. There was no open hostility, but the Niffs rarely left the part of Lestallum that had been claimed by Aranea’s mercenaries long before the Niffs arrived. Those few who did, often to ask about where to find something of some sort were met with tension, doubt.

Never hostility, never fear.

It wasn’t until one day a handful Accordans raised their voices that this fragile peace broke. A gathering of people – Noctis recognised a handful of these people as people from Lestallum who had taken care of Iris and Talcott after the Caligo Ulldor incident. Those were people who hated Niffs because they all had to be the same as that horrid man who had killed Jared Hester. The Accordans had tolerated the imperials in their country, in their capital city, for longer than the battle had been on Lucian soil. Lucians and Accordans exchanged news, and everyone knew of Jared and the horrible death at the hands of Ulldor.

Noctis should have expected as much.

He was rather surprised that Loqi Tummelt did not immediately snap upon being called these things. Niffs were proud, prouder than Lucians even. Despite his humiliating defeat at the hands of Noctis and the others, despite the fact that he looked rather horrible overall because of the burns that would likely never fade, Loqi did not flinch as they hurled insults at him. At least until they brought up Ulldor, and started asking when Loqi would start torturing unarmed servants to death in front of children.

There was a long, drawn out moment of silence. The atmosphere shifted and it had gone from the usual jabs to a very tense situation, and Noctis expected the Niff to completely explode. It would upset the balance, and Noctis would have to go back on his word to let the Niffs recover.

It was a strange throwback to the day Gladio had stood between him and this drunk raving at him. How Gladio had not reacted, had only stood there nailing the man with a silent glare even after he nearly lost an eye to this guy. Just like Gladio back then, Loqi remained standing there, his expression completely blank. The civilians continued hurling their insults at him, and Noctis shook his head from where he stood. He would have expected something similar to the Norduscaen Blockade, with Loqi’s pride getting in the way of his rational thinking.

Just as Noctis considered stepping out from where he stood, the Niff shook his head. Slowly, very slowly.

“You’re right – I am a coward. Someone who would have done just about any of these things you’re accusing me of planning, as long as the emperor demanded it.” A pained sigh escaped the Niff. “But I--”

There was that flash of pride that Noctis was so scared of. For a split second he looked like the Niff commander he actually was, and the Accordans in the group narrowed their eyes at him.

Then someone cleared their throat. Loudly. The group of people nearly jumped out of their skin as Cor arrived on the scene with a scowl. Noctis held his breath from his vantage point – while the general population respected Cor, Loqi hated the man more than anything. If there was even the slightest chance of this blowing up even more, he would have to step in. Truth be told, Noctis was not certain of how to do that. It had always been Ignis who had diffused situations between people and them, even though he often claimed he was not good with people. Ignis had always had a way with words that somehow smoothed over the tide.

“Any problems?” Cor even stood there in parade rest. He was clearly aware of what was going on, and for a moment Noctis wondered if he too had watched this scene unfold before he decided to step in.

“None, Marshal,” the Lucians said quickly. The Accordans muttered in agreement before the group vanished. The looks they shot the Niff were pretty clear, however.

Open hostility.

Loqi stood there with his head held high until Cor started moving. All of a sudden the proud commander seemed to shrink away, uncertain of what to do or say.

“… Thanks.”

Cor only raised an eyebrow. “You needn’t thank me.”

“Yes, I do!”

Noctis held his breath. Loqi Tummelt was known for an almost petty desire to hunt down the Marshal, a tech-freak just like Prompto was but also of a high standing that almost rivalled that of Ignis. Young and driven, proud to a fault, and that pride had been his downfall in the end. He wasn’t even sure why he was so oddly fixated on Cor, but even now the younger man was trembling.

“I ought to apologise first and foremost!” Loqi shook his head furiously. “Doesn’t matter. Where’s the High Commander? Highwind sent me to find him.”

* * *

“No, you’ve got a point, Gladio. We’re losing control of the outposts too quickly; something’s definitely wrong.”

Meldacio Hunter HQ had become the makeshift home for the Niffs and Aranea’s mercenaries after the people had recovered. It had been Aranea who had suggested as much, seeing how her own countrymen were aware of the tensions and what they had done.

“Not for long, mind, but until people get used to Niffs other than me ‘n my boys being alive.”

It had only lasted a month. Then the power lines that the Glaive had fought so hard to reconnect had died, almost as if someone had deliberately destroyed them.

“But why would Ardyn go to such lengths?”

It was Iris who scrunched up her nose. She had finally recovered properly, had even helped bringing the Niffs back to Lestallum with Aranea. Her exploits had earned her the nickname ‘Daemon Slayer’, even if she preferred not talking about that incident the night they found the Niffs. No one really talked about it – but this was suspicious.

Gladio also narrowed his eyes. Cor and Prompto were also here, but for now the king and the Shield focused on the almost infamous Daemon Slayer.

“If you have something to say, say it.” Noctis had almost forgotten how soft Gladio’s voice could sound whenever his sister was involved. The Amicitia siblings remained close even though their duties usually kept them busy and away from each other, and Iris folded her hands with a sigh.

“… It only concerns Noct. Sorry, Gladdy.”

Noctis took that as an opportunity to dismiss the meeting; they had not gotten anywhere anyway. Just baseless speculation, something they could not afford when lives were at stake. He and Iris remained in the room in the Leveille, with Iris drumming her fingers on it as the others left. Only Cor shot her a long, dark look before leaving last.

“Well then. It only concerns me, so here I am.”

“I don’t think it’s _Ardyn_ who’s doing that kind of thing. Well at least not… physically.”

They had ruled Daemons out. True, Daemons were very good at destroying things, but power lines ironically were some of the very few things that most breeds avoided. Only something that had been bred in Niflheim was unusually attracted to electricity, but most of these creatures remained on the other continent. Noctis didn’t want to imagine what it looked like there – if there were any other living Niffs hiding.

Ardyn was a logical conclusion. Noctis had no idea what drove the man, but it couldn’t be anything good. He was way too intelligent to vanish or get himself caught by Daemons… and he wasn’t alone.

“You suspect...”

“Ignis.” Iris folded her hands and stared out of the window, clearly avoiding eye contact. “Something’s not _right_ about him.”

“You… you met him? _How?”_

A long moment of silence. Iris closed her eyes, sudden uncertainty on her face.

According to Cor they had arrived just in time for her to know out a Red Giant. Then she had frozen, staring at something in the dark with an Iron Giant still around. The creature had smashed her backwards, sent her right into the gaggle of Niffs. The doctors Gladio had dragged her to had said it was a miracle that she had been standing until she passed out, that it was a miracle that she was even alive to begin with. She had narrowly avoided bleeding to death because most of her injuries had been internal rather than external. Iris definitely never spoke of the moment where she had lost focus, and none of the people arriving at the scene understood why she had stopped like that. The Niffs had heard and seen what she had done – but those people had agreed that they wouldn’t speak of this. A silent agreement, most likely; one that Iris had been in with, too.

“He was there, Noct. He was… the one who had driven the Niffs to this place.”

“Prompto said it was Daemons.” He tried to ignore his wildly hammering heart.

“He was _controlling_ them. He also didn’t… exactly come out of hiding until what’s-his-name… Loqi? He didn’t come out of hiding until Loqi barked up the wrong tree and demanded that whoever was controlling these Daemons show themselves. But yeah, I… I think it’s Ignis who’s been sabotaging our power lines.”

Noctis could only stare at her as she sighed deeply. Of course the possibility was there; Noctis had never once been able to eliminate that horrible dreadful voice in his head saying that Ignis was the one behind things. Daemon attacks, Glaives vanishing, destroyed houses somewhere in the countryside.

“...”

“Something about Ignis was… strange, though. He looked… how do I say that. He was not himself. Absolutely not himself. Kind of unhinged? Called the Niffs vermin he was hunting, but there was a short moment where he looked legitimately terrified when a Daemon got through to a civilian and tore him apart.” Iris closed her eyes again. “I think he panicked and fled before anyone else arrived, and the Iron Giant knocked me back just after he started running. The Daemons were kind of confused after he left, got more savage when that confusion passed, but thanks to Ravus, Aranea and the Marshal we all made it out… well, as unscathed as we could.”

His head wouldn’t make sense of her words. Everything she said did not sound like something Ignis would do, from even calling someone he hated _vermin_ to running away when something did not go to plan or panic overtook him. All of this seemed to perfectly contradict the person Ignis was – the person Noctis knew and loved.

“You’re right. That… that doesn’t sound like him.”

“Honestly, Noct, I… I think he got brainwashed. Really badly brainwashed. How long did it take you to get to Gralea again?”

“A few… days. I was unconscious for a while.”

It wasn’t unheard of that people were tortured beyond their breaking point in the past. Ardyn was resourceful and cunning, and the first production facility that Ravus had sent Aranea to investigate came back to his mind. That place had been levelled, with nothing of it remaining. Aranea had said that she hadn’t exactly dug around in the snow to find something, but considering that Ignis’ space in the Armiger had been completely empty not too long after he and Ardyn vanished…

“A few days in enemy hands is enough to break someone. Even someone as resilient as Ignis.”

Noctis was fairly certain that Ignis had received training. He was the advisor; an advisor was a weak point in a chain of command because normally they did not fight. Therefore Lucian advisors went through rigorous exercises to avoid speaking even under the most extreme circumstances, but after Altissia Ignis definitely had been hurt and left vulnerable. He had fought through an entire city on the brink of destruction and then still fought Ravus while battered and bleeding and exhausted. In that state not even Ignis would be able to withstand whatever horrors Niflheim employed other than MTs.

A shudder ran down his spine as he opened his mouth again only to close it without saying something.

“I know you don’t like thinking about it. That’s why I kept quiet. … I shouldn’t have done that and mentioned it as soon as I woke up again. Sorry, Noct.”

He tilted his head a little at her.

“Iris. I’m just… glad you’re alive. And thanks for telling me.”

Ravus and Aranea had mentioned that Noctis’ theory of Ignis being controlled somehow had grounds when they had found the place levelled. Iris had actually seen him and said that he had acted rather peculiarly.

He was left with the familiar heartache after Iris went to find her brother. That familiar pain of missing someone so much it nearly split him in half.

* * *

Surprisingly enough, it were the Niffs who brought it up. An arrangement of some sort, something that would make them less useless in the long run. Quite a few of the civilians were rather good with machines – Cindy asked for three of them before they could even halfway finish their sentence. For the first time since the war started hundreds of years ago there were Niffs and Lucians working hand in hand, and the rest of them soon followed.

The Glaives were wary at first when the recovered soldiers arrived together with Noctis. Thankfully enough Cor had dispatched most of the Crownsguard that day and was free to come sit on the sidelines of the area they had cleared near the power plant for this training exercise. It was Iris together with her Glaive friend who took the first step and almost cheerfully asked one of the soldiers about tactics. Anything to ward off this bastion of light against the darkness, and the woman they had approached laughed kind of awkwardly while thanking Iris for helping them. It broke the ice, somewhat. The Galahdians were anything but happy, but little by little, with every passing minute, the awkward atmosphere changed into something tense but manageable.

It reminded him of the time that he had brought Ignis and Gladio to his training with the Glaives. They weren’t exactly friends of nobility – Gladio and Ignis were just about the highest-standing nobles in all of Lucis because of their bloodlines and connections to the crown prince. Back then the Glaives and his two friends had eyed one another very cautiously, hostile almost.

It had surprisingly enough been the oldest of the group, a man who had seen his hometown burn down and who seemingly hated the Crownsguard, who had taken a step forward and opened a discussion about how the fighting styles of the Crownsguard and the Kingsglaive differed. Ignis had been in his element right away when they came to the topic of strategies, and immediately made a point in pointing out how versatile the Glaives were in a field. Even Gladio had joined in after a while, and it had made for a rather pleasant afternoon.

This was similar.

Of course it wouldn’t be the same. The Niffs would have to answer for their crimes eventually, but in the dark the court was not going to meet and reach a decision on them. They were trained in combat, and the people of Lestallum needed the helping hands with even more refugees pouring in lately. The other outposts were to be evacuated soon because the power lines there were no longer deemed safe. There were likely more Accordans on the way since one of the cities there had lost its power and not every person who had stayed there could be distributed to the remaining cities on the continent. Ravus had turned Fenestala Manor into the last safe space in Tenebrae for those who did not wish to leave, left it all open for the public after securing the payment he had promised Aranea. Niflheim remained as deadly quiet as it had since the day darkness fell.

It had nearly been a year since Ravus had taken them to Gralea, and Noctis still felt nothing but dull shock and dread whenever he thought back to that.

He had asked about the empty keep. He was met with awkward silence as the Niff soldiers looked at one another with almost helpless looks on their faces.

“We… abandoned post,” was what Loqi had said eventually. “Deserted. Took some civilians, occupied a safety bunker with enough resources to let us survive for… roughly a year. I reckon there’s at least another bunker in use, ours was just a small one somewhere in the countryside, close to where the rehabilitation centre was. But we couldn’t exactly contact them. So we don’t know. For all we know they all… vanished. Vanished like so many other sectors of Gralea and Niflheim at large.”

Ravus had barely even reacted to being told that most of Niflheim was likely wiped out.

“They… no, we had it coming. Experimenting with Daemons and attempting to contain outbreaks by putting sectors under quarantine? It is only our righteous punishment,” the High Commander said and the Niffs all muttered darkly before nodding in agreement. They had it coming, they deserved it.

Noctis sat beside Cor and watched them train together with the Glaives.

“You know… I’ve been thinking, Cor.”

The Marshal acknowledged him with a grunt, his eyes still on watching a pair of Niffs taking on a pair of Glaives. The Niffs weren’t trained in the art of warping and had to rely on trying to know in advance where the Lucians would pop up, which made for a rather interesting dance on the mock battlefield.

“Would my father have accepted these people, given them shelter? I… I don’t think he would have. You’re the person who knew my father best so… would he have given these Niffs protection?”

“Your father valued a great many virtues and believed that saving one could save many but… I’m not so sure. I’m fairly certain Clarus would have talked him out of it, at the very least. Because people generally don’t change their ways, and that includes your father. He was not a friend of Niflheim, he accepted the treaty fully knowing he was signing his own death warrant. Were he in the same situation… perhaps he wouldn’t have done the same as you. Not that that’s a bad thing.”

Noctis leaned against the wall and looked up. The clouds had turned into a miasma at some point, inky and blotchy and all-together terrible. It was like a heavy curtain that someone had hung over Eos to block out the sun, and it had considerably cooled down even the hottest city in Lucis by now. If he got up and walked to the highest point of Lestallum he could likely see lights from havens all around – whenever there was a light source somewhere it shone for hundreds of miles across the countryside, drawing in Daemons and hunters alike. Light meant life.

“All things considered, I do think that Regis would be prouder than I am to see you acting so… very grown-up.”

Noctis threw a glance at Cor. The man was smiling sadly as he watched the Glaives. “You’re… proud of me?”

“Who wouldn’t be proud when the kid they saw grow up takes the centre stage and becomes a beacon of hope in his own way? We may lack the light, but we’ve not yet lost hope, and you being here is a very important factor in that, Noctis. No, Your Majesty.”

The distant horizon was always inky black and blank. Insomnia lay there like a forbidden shrine, teeming with the nastiest creatures and the one that led them.

And Ignis.

* * *

“What do you mean _he went missing?!”_

The Glaives were staring at him with wide eyes.

Noctis had spent the last few days thinking about Ignis again. There had been reports of glimpses of someone moving alongside groups of Daemons that seemingly ignored hunters. One person had managed to look at that man closer, had described him as someone with surprisingly broad shoulders and strikingly green eyes. Sharply dressed, in the Lucian royal colour black, with brown hair that looked like it had not been trimmed in a while. Unkempt but still sharply dressed, with a scar they compared to Gladio’s, just not as vertical as Gladio’s were.

Iris had described Ignis similarly, and Noctis had started to wonder about what was going on. It had been nearly a year, and Ardyn had not somehow used Ignis more outside of the encounter Iris had had. It was likely related to the fact that Noctis was still not allowed outside of Lestallum, though he was working on that. Cor and Ravus said it was to keep the moral high, Gladio said that it was to keep him safe from whatever the hell was going on.

Noctis had been over that a billion times. He was fairly certain he would no longer march directly to Insomnia to demand a fight with Ardyn. He wanted to see the damage done to his country for himself, and hopefully run into Ignis somewhere in the countryside.

“W-We were separated!”

“Did you look for him at all!?”

“Of course we did, Your Majesty! But he was just… gone.”

It had been a rather simple retrieval mission. A truck had been overrun, with the driver barely managing to make it to Lestallum in one piece. The shards he had carried however were gone, and it had taken them a few days to find where these had been taken. Trading goods had slowly started to replace Gil amongst the hunters, Crownsguard and Kingsglaive by now, so losing that truck’s materials had been a rather hard hit.

“Well then, don’t just stand there gawping at me like that! Get reinforcements! Scout the area where you last saw him!”

Cor had volunteered for this mission.

The Glaives had returned without him.


	13. You can't turn back.

Ignis Scientia was a man of reason, or so he liked to think. As long as he managed to keep himself together, he could likely work out a reason for what he had done.

Fire was a constant in his life, from his name to the very first magic that ever answered his call, to the element that he felt most comfortable with, to the one that manifested itself before him first when he had indeed received a piece of the Accursed’s powers. He was liable to set things on fire when stressed, upset – Ignis wanted to believe that this was a stress reaction, something that did not go far beyond setting a spectacular cooking failure on fire or juggling his knives while they were enhanced. This was a natural reaction. Normal.

He very well knew it wasn’t, and he had stayed in his makeshift room for an entire day staring at the ceiling.

Even though he had willingly entered this rabbit hole, he was suddenly very painfully aware that he was starting to… enjoy this. He had enjoyed setting the remnants of his old life, his happiness apart. He’d wanted Lestallum to see it, perhaps as one last desperate scream for help of some sort. He’d wanted them to see it so they would come marching into Insomnia, take it back by force.

At some point he jumped to his feet, dizzy and nauseous from the sudden movement, and rushed over to cabinet he had crammed the Ring of the Lucii into. It had been a while since he had last looked at this thing. This tiny, unassuming thing that always rested on the ruler’s fingers; an instrument of divine will and divine right. Made to control the crystal, made to summon forth the Lucii.

Made to be worn by a man born to die to take down a monster the gods had created.

He for about an hour he stood there, his mind slowly but steadily running in circles. He kept telling himself this was for Noctis, that it was all for Noctis. Only when he realised that it had become a mad mantra he shoved the ring back into its surprisingly save place and ran his hands through his hair. He hadn’t even realised that his breath had become that loud.

Now then, he was a man of reason when it came down to it. Clearly he was suffering from lack of human interaction – Ardyn barely qualified. He had been raised on the fear of Daemons like any person on Eos was. The only “people” he had talked with lately had been Daemons all around, some more or less humanoid-looking, others barely more than viscous acid that had gained sentience. None of them spoke back other than Ardyn, but the Accursed was a special case anyway. Whenever he spoke he spoke in riddles, kept referencing events that Ignis had never learned about. He always delivered these talks with the most unsettling expressions; wide smiles that never reached his eyes, deep frowns but a voice almost shockingly clear from sudden bouts of seething hatred.

Ruler and recipient were connected to a degree.

Perhaps sharing that bond with the Accursed was slowly driving him insane.

Ignis still sought the man out, his steps surprisingly steady for someone on the verge of crying. Ardyn had a habit of stalking through the streets like an animal on the hunt, a hungry glare in his eyes as he whisked around corners with his coat billowing behind him. Most people would have expected the Accursed to be a horrible creature that barely qualified as human; not a man with a flair for the dramatic, whose clothes all but supported these overly dramatic antics of his.

It took Ignis a while to find him this time. The further he walked the more he started being aware of how some highways were completely trashed, how some places looked like they had been scorched or hit by lightning rather than outright destroyed. There were chunks of the Old Wall strewn around; a tale of a battle that he would never hear because there were no people left in Insomnia. And the man who had roused these statues from their long slumber had paid the price for putting on the Ring of the Lucii.

Eventually Ignis found Ardyn. The man was standing in front of a statue that Ignis did not recognise at first. For a good few moments they stood there in silence until Ignis recognised the statue.

“The Mystic.” There was a strange tinge to Ardyn’s voice.

Ardyn had put a hand on the rock, an almost gentle gesture for a man who had cloaked the world in eternal darkness. Ignis felt like he was intruding – he likely was.

“Statues of rulers old failed to protect the city against the horrors that humanity created. Tragic, is it not, brother dearest?” Ignis had never in the last few months heard Ardyn speak that softly. It sounded perversely wrong coming out of that man’s mouth. “You swore an oath to keep the city safe, and look where it got you! Your spirit partially entrapped in a trinket lost at sea, the other half and the dust that remains of you stuck in a tomb they built for you.”

It was bizarre to see Ardyn Izunia lean his head against the statue as if it would start talking back any time soon. Ignis had seen that expression the man wore before; Talcott’s expression generally changed to something similar whenever he mentioned his grandfather.

The news had talked about the Niff government sometimes. It was usually reserved for news about how there was still no heir to the Aldercapt family and fortune, sometimes it had been about Besithia and how his advancements had brought therefore unknown military power to the empire. Ignis remembered that exactly once he had heard a report on the enigmatic but charismatic Chancellor of Niflheim, one Mr Izunia. How there were no living relatives, how no one was entirely sure which part of the country he had come from, how exactly he had managed to win enough sympathies to be elected to the highest non-military office in the country. But the civilians loved him, loved his sharp intelligence and the fact that the country’s non-military exploits were also working all thanks to him. Ignis hadn’t ever seen a picture of the man but he had imagined someone not unlike King Regis back then.

Of course, the real deal was not quite what he had imagined him to be.

And then he had turned out to be the Accursed, a man of Lucian birth and one related to the royal house.

Ignis considered warning Ardyn that he was here since the man seemed rather out of it, but he instead settled for speaking right away. “If you permit me the question; what was he like? The Founding King?”

“An idiot.” It was delivered so dryly, so matter-of-factly that Ignis nearly choked. “Most of the time. Unfortunately he was rather sharp when he needed to be.”

The replaced king who never truly sat the throne. Ardyn had been demonised by Crystal and brother, exiled from his home country and been erased from history. Noctis was supposed to turn into something similar, and a loud static hiss went through his head. Ignis heard himself growl in pain as he raised a hand to his temples.

Ardyn’s head was still leaning against the statue; his back was still turned to Ignis. “Still tormented by whatever divine being touched you upon the Altar of the Tidemother, eh? Somnus was the same. Eventually they’ll leave you alone.”

Ignis blinked.

“They… excuse me?”

“Come now.” Finally Ardyn moved, but he only tilted his head upwards slowly to stare at the statue some more. “You nearly had a hysteric breakdown on your way to the Crystal in Zegnautus Keep. Something was going on that nearly drove you to _tears,_ and trust me when I say I spent enough time watching _Noctis_ and his little retinue. Even under extreme stress one Ignis Scientia always kept at least some level of composure. Considering I had previously made certain there were no people left alive that could operate machinery – and the fact that I would have heard them – something was going on. Migraines look different. General exhaustion and exhaustion-related nonsense would have had the rest of your body react. True, you were staggering around and mildly disoriented, but those sudden bouts of you standing perfectly straight and then all but falling in on yourself, clutching your head? Eyes glazed over, laboured breathing, increased heart rate. Something intrusive was going on; plain elimination only leaves something going on in your head. Migraines were ruled out beforehand. A concussion would have left you reacting differently. I am fairly certain you were not hiding any sort of shrapnel injury for years.”

Ardyn sounded extremely bored as he went down that list. Ignis had known that the man was versed in medicine – Ardyn had patched him up, after all. It just hadn’t struck him how extensive that pool of knowledge actually was.

“Considering there was the Crystal in Zegnautus, and the fact you were left to roam Altissia almost entirely unsupervised by the army, came across the dead Oracle together with her brother…” A deep, almost annoyed exhale. “Factoring in past experiences of Somnus after meeting with the woman who would become the first Oracle… you’re being haunted by something with divine powers.”

Ignis could only stare as the Accursed let out a dry laugh. He finally stepped away from the statue after patting it once more almost too gently.

“Unless you invited it. The effect remains the same.”

‘ _I hope you suffer from it,’_ was what Ardyn likely didn’t say, judging from his expression. Ignis lowered his gaze to look away from that intense stare Ardyn was giving him, and also because it made the static hiss in his ears less intense. Eventually it faded after what felt like an eternity, and Ignis invited the sudden silence happily. Anything was better than that static noise.

“Now then, was there something you needed me for or are you being a nuisance just because you can?”

He couldn’t exactly say that he was going insane slowly but steadily. That would only earn him a laugh, a pat on the back, a welcoming card of the most ironic and cruel kind. He also couldn’t really say that ever since that encounter with Iris he had started to realise that he was craving human interaction of some sort, and Ardyn was the only thing that was at least somewhat human enough to satisfy this condition. Ignis remained quiet before turning his head up to look at the statue.

“I suppose I am simply being a nuisance because I can.”

“Mhm. Just like Somnus was. Figures; two replacement kings would wind up being rather similar in the worst ways.”

* * *

The first time he nearly ran into Glaives his heart almost stopped.

It had been a training exercise, an excuse to leave the empty city that only made him feel like his entire body was made of lead. A horrible voice in the back of his head suggested to kill them before they realised who he was or what was going on when they called out to him and warned him about the Daemons.

It was a diversionary effort, he realised. Daemons reacted to sound and light, and calling for someone would likely direct the attention of these creatures over to the Glaives instead of whoever it was they were hunting, thus severely lessening the danger for the person in question while also increasing it for the hunters.

Ignis stood there frozen for a second, the Daemons frozen with him.

He wasn’t in the mood for a fight, and killing the Glaives would offer him nothing. After all once they realised who he was they would likely remember that there was a chance that he was possessed or brainwashed. Ignis thus made a point in reacting slowly, mechanically. Turned to look at the source of the noise, then turned around and walked away calmly, the Daemons following him.

The Glaives didn’t chase him.

Those encounters became more frequent, but Ignis started to realise that they were usually on the same paths. There was something they were trying to gather, something they were trying to protect out here in the wilderness. It was likely the source of light over by what he assumed was Meldacio Hunter HQ; he had no idea how far into the country he was at this moment and Mount Ravatogh’s fires were starting to die down. It was getting exceptionally hard to parse where in Lucis he was with the lack of light and the slow but steady decay of any landmarks that were there beforehand.

At least getting better at predicting the Glaives’ paths made it easier for him to dodge them as he trained. There was no way in hell he would let a Red Giant screw up his plans like this again, and so Ignis started an almost self-destructive training regimen concerning the control over Daemons. It was still magic; overdoing it left him gasping for breath on the ground and with his vision swimming. Every time he entered stasis that way the static noise rose, filled his head with a dull ache and made his stomach even more upset than it normally wound up being after entering stasis.

He rolled over on the ground, the ronin-types nearby standing as still as Daemons usually did when the orders they had been receiving suddenly ceased coming in. There were so many mannerisms that terrified Ignis in hindsight. Most of the ones in Steyliff Grove had acted similarly – perfectly still until Noctis, Aranea, Prompto and Ignis had arrived, then suddenly attacking with a ferocity and precision that was unheard of. Many of the larger hunts had been the same. Ardyn had influenced their travels before they even began, and had continued throwing bigger challenges into their way in an attempt to hone Noctis’ battle skills.

By any means, it still didn’t make sense. Ardyn had claimed that he had wanted to vanquish Noctis at the height of his power, but the prophecy clearly stated that the Chosen would overwhelm the Accursed. The fact that Ardyn made a point in ensuring Noctis got to where he needed to get unchallenged but still ensuring that during downtime he received training to grow stronger… It was completely contradictory. A lot about the Accursed was, actually, now that he thought about it.

Ignis wiped the cold sweat off his forehead with a sigh and sat up. The static was vanishing and he could feel his arms again; the numbness in his limbs was a new side-effect of entering stasis. Most of the Glaives had it as general side-effect when they overdid it and according to reports it was the side-effect Cor suffered from the most. Complete numbness, even unconsciousness. Ignis’ legs just gave in after a while, but the timespan of when he entered stasis and when he came out of it was changing. His stamina increased, his stasis-time decreased in the few weeks he spent stalking the countryside and running alongside the creatures he was trying to control.

The first true success he felt was the day that a Red Giant he found lumbering around somewhere turned to stare at him. Ignis stared back.

This was reminiscent of the Deathclaw situation way back when Ardyn had handed him the trident that he carried around everywhere. He could make an example of this creatures not that he was rested.

Alas, the creature remained still and Ignis realised it was waiting for orders.

* * *

He landed with a heavy crash and he saw stars for a split second. Ignis rolled over with a wheeze, the Trident of the Oracle ramming into the ground next to him and his daggers clanging on the ground next to him.

“Marginally better.” Ardyn shook his hands, the dark miasma that had surrounded him just a moment ago dispersing rapidly until nothing of it remained.

“I somehow… doubt that anyone from Lestallum would use something like this.” Ignis fought back a groan of pain as he paused for a second.

“Perhaps not a member of the Kingsglaive or the Crownsguard. But you’re forgetting one other person in Lestallum who does not fall under either of these categories.”

Ignis shook his head as he dragged himself up with the trident. He tried to yank it out of the concrete, but the weapon refused to budge to his shaking hands.

“…”

“You should have seen a similar art before. Though not magical but rather _Magiteknical_ in execution. By now he should be able to at least partially do what the Oracle could do. Weaker in theory, but light sadly overpowers darkness.”

Ignis hadn’t considered that Ravus was still in Lestallum. He would have thought the man would return to Tenebrae or Niflheim to help the people there or find them in the first place. He had no obligation to the crown, let alone Noctis. _Especially_ not Noctis, at least as far as Ignis knew.

He had been with them in Zegnautus Keep, which really only made sense. Ravus had been at the Altar, and though knocked out by the time Ignis accepted Ardyn’s proposal he had heard what the man had offered. Logical conclusions all but traced Ignis’ path to Gralea, and for Ravus the enemy of an enemy was a friend for as long as their goals overlapped.

“… You could have just said as much.”

“Where’s the fun in that, Ignis?”

“You nearly cracked a few ribs of mine with that just now.”

“Wouldn’t have been the first time, and definitely not the last.”

“Speaking from experience?”

“I’m afraid the answer to _that_ question will cost you a leg and a half.”

Ignis finally managed to yank the Trident of the Oracle out of the street and staggered backwards a few steps. The daggers were still on the ground, but right now he went over the trident with a critical eye.

Blood of the Oracle… if the Glaives were able to use magic, perhaps Ravus was capable of healing now. Someone who could perhaps purge early stages of the Scourge, even – that was the gift of his bloodline, though it really only manifested in the women who were destined to become the Oracle. Ravus would never have the same powers as Lunafreya.

* * *

Of all the things he had thought he would see after his betrayal, this was not one of them.

He had once more been trying things out, this time with two Red Giants under his control. It had been about a year since Zegnautus Keep, and he was getting the hang of doing things without pushing himself too far. At first he had assumed the sound was a hunter from Lestallum who had come too close while he had been occupied with keeping the Daemons under control.

Then he had heard the familiar click of claws against rock, and had turned around.

The Chocobo was ruffled, looked kind of starved, but its eyes were still bright and attentive. Ignis would recognise that one anywhere.

Wiz’ Chocobo Post was abandoned, most of the birds taken. Noctis had bought the birds when the Regalia had gone missing following the awakening of the Archaean; something that had reduced them to no money and having to take hunts for three days in succession to afford a meal when they ran out of ingredients, but in the long run it had been an excellent idea. This bird in particular was so achingly familiar that Ignis had to dismiss the Red Giants before taking a step forwards.

“Benu.”

It was the bird Noctis had chosen for himself, a Chocobo with grey plumage with white spots on it. It was a rather unassuming animal, especially compared to its bright yellow brethren. But something about this Chocobo in particular had caught Noctis’ attention, and Benu not once disappointed. He wasn’t slower than any other breed despite looking rather funny, was attentive and gentle and caring.

Ignis had assumed the bird had died or been taken to Lestallum.

The Chocobo chirped at him.

“Why are you out here all on your own?” He took a careful step towards the bird to see if it would run away or not. Benu did not budge; instead he carefully took a step towards Ignis. If the bird could ask Ignis was rather certain he would ask him the same question as he carefully reached towards the bird and pat its beak.

Most of the animals had died by now. The only reason there were no rotting carcasses strewn across the entire countryside was the fact that Daemons tore what was left apart – or the Scourge transformed it into horrible miscreations whose groans and growls and groans echoed across the hills and rivers like an eerie reminder that Eos was decaying. Those few animals that survived would likely not die out any time soon unless a larger Daemon came across them and tore them all apart. A single Chocobo, starved as it looked, was unlikely. Especially a tamed one.

But here he stood, and Ignis could just picture Noctis tiptoeing to hug that bird with a laugh as the thunderstorm raged all around them constantly. The way the bird nestled up to Noctis, how it even ran into battle alongside him in some cases. The bird just chirped at him again as he absent-mindedly pat its head.

He couldn’t just leave Benu out here. He also couldn’t march back into Insomnia with a bird.

Ignis wasn’t entirely ready to leave Benu behind like that either.

The only option was getting him close enough to Lestallum for some hunters to find him and hopefully take him to the city with them.

Eventually he managed to talk himself into doing it and the bird into letting him ride it. Ignis’ own bird had been much larger, almost rivalling Gladio’s; the difference was that Ignis’ had been much faster but also had less stamina. It was kind of ironic how their birds had mirrored them and their roles in the party, from flighty and overexcited to sullen but gentle to sharp and withdrawn to brute but trustworthy. Just riding a Chocobo was familiar, even though it had been nearly a year since they had left Lucis for Accordan shores.

He almost saw the light too late and decided to roll himself off Benu’s back and behind a rock. The bird stopped with a confused wark, which then alerted the hunters that were way too far out to just be in a team of two. At least Ignis was fairly certain that they shouldn’t just be the two of them, what with the Daemons that prowled about out here. They caught him even though he desperately tried to find his rider again.

At least it meant the advisor could avoid the city, avoid the other people.

* * *

The fight hadn’t gone that bad. Ignis had watched from his perch not too far from the river, not even controlling these Daemons for once.

Cor and a handful Glaives, sent to retrieve this crate that the Daemons had been carrying around. It had been a year since he had last seen the Marshal, but all things considered the man was still as impressive as ever. He was still devastatingly powerful and precise with his movements, old injuries from his time in the Trials of Gilgamesh notwithstanding. Those had never once held Cor back.

The Glaives weren’t that bad either. They were some of the last recruits before the Fall, flighty and inexperienced but determined. They had survived by simply not being deployed with the veterans and traitors, and then made a name for themselves during the darkness. At least whoever was assigning these people to their tasks had the brains to send experienced soldiers with comparatively inexperienced people. For a while Ignis watched the slash and swing of weapons with interest; the Glaives especially seemed to have a natural aptitude for slinging spells around in a rather intriguing way. One seemed to breathe fire between reloading her guns, one’s bulky sword sent entire showers of sparks down on Daemons. One stayed in the back and called for regrouping manoeuvrers, not unlike Ignis did whenever the group had gotten caught in a long battle and everyone could use the boost then. Unlike Ignis, however, that man was able to control a magic that Ignis had seen exactly once, and then only with the soft golden glow of ancient magic that was passed down through a bloodline rather than a familiar-looking shine. That Glaive was able to _heal._

He had been so enraptured by the way those people fought that he didn’t realise that the fight was rapidly turning around the moment something that looked like a Behemoth appeared. All of a sudden they were fighting for their lives against something that breathed frost and miasma at them. For a while the fighting was frantic, desperate; the man in the back calling them over for a quick refreshing spell of some sort more often than before – either to heal injuries or to make the frost that bloomed on their bodies vanish. After a while they regained control, managed to overwhelm the Behemoth.

As it fell over Cor lost his footing around the river and fell into it.

The Glaives didn’t notice right away, went to retrieve what they had come for since the on-land Daemons had withdrawn on Ignis’ commands.

Cor did not resurface. Ignis caught a movement in the water, something that went down the river – this was one of the few rivers that had not yet gone completely dry or stale. It still moved, the roar of water duller than it had been before darkness but still strong enough to pull someone along when they were exhausted from a battle. The fact that it was infested with Daemons that had once been the Sahagins that further down the river did not help the slightest. Cor had likely gotten pulled along by one of these as well as the push of water.

Just as the Glaives started calling for the Marshal, Ignis left his position and hurried down beside the river.

Somewhere up ahead the riverbed all but sunk down, the ground suddenly taking a deep dive. A cliff by any means, where once upon a time the Sahagin had nested. Ignis had been taught how to avoid going near these places, and even though they had all turned into Daemons that only lived in the water by now he still hesitated for a second. Then he saw movement on the rocks beside the cliff; not something a leftover Sahagin would be doing. That was a man dragging himself back to his feet.

The Crownsguard Marshal Cor Leonis. A war hero of a sort, a man who had always stood beside King Regis for as long as Ignis remembered. Most people barely remembered a time where Cor hadn’t dominated the Crownsguard in sheer skill and experience. The man moved precisely; was clearly ripping off part of his trousers to stop the bleeding. It had indeed been a Daemon that looked an awful lot like a Sahagin that had clamped its jaw around one of Cor’s legs and dragged the man down the river. It was now dead, with Cor’s katana sheathed at his side.

The Glaives wouldn’t go look downstream for a while yet. Ignis quietly gave the order to the Daemons around this place to make certain no Glaive came through to here. Cor heard the shuffle up ahead and looked around.

The man had supervised a lot of things in Ignis’ life. Training first and foremost, but he had also often been there when the topic came to the old war, the failed alliance talks between Accordo and Lucis. He had lived that recent history after all. He had been there when Galahd fell, had been there when King Mors died.

Ignis bowed when Cor stopped to look at him.

“Marshal.”

Any other person with a leg injury would have staggered, but even now Cor was standing as straight and tall as always. “Ignis.”

Ignis and Noctis had spent hours upon hours talking about the Marshal when they were younger. About whether this man would be teaching the prince how to fight or not; if Ignis would be learning the blade from him. For a while Ignis had actually considered learning how to wield a katana, had actually started teaching himself under Cor’s ever watchful eye before he eventually settled on something different. Sometimes Ignis still used one, if Noctis tossed him a sword like that. It wasn’t something he used often, but he always kept how Cor used it in the back of his head.

This was a man who Ignis looked up to.

Someone who was deemed undefeatable by most people. Even just the name made soldiers from other countries shiver and doubt their orders. A man who was revered as only survivor of the Trials of Gilgamesh, as man of conviction. For a long while there was silence before Cor let out something between a laugh and a snort.

“Iris was fairly convinced that you were being controlled and whoever was controlling lost control over you for a second. You ran out of your own free will after you were forced to fight her – but that was not the case at all, was it?”

Ignis tilted his head slowly, an almost apologetic smile on his face. “You sound very sure of yourself.”

“You could fool Iris. She’s young and inexperienced, was shocked by your sudden appearance and your crass choice of words. Certainly that would have never left your mouth – as far as she knew. You were very well aware of all of this, weren’t you, Ignis?”

Cor did not have a hand on his weapon. He was just standing there, waiting and judging the situation, and Ignis crossed his arms. “And if I was?”

“It would certainly raise some other questions. First and foremost, _why?”_

The man had been around for so long, Ignis had essentially grown up around him. Though Ignis never really opened up to people other than Noctis, Cor at least knew enough about what drove the advisor. Stories from the prince, stories from the king, from the boy’s uncle.

Ignis narrowed eyes a little. “Can’t you guess?”

He was not willing to live in a world without Noctis. Or at least in a world that would sacrifice Noctis for the sake of the planet. A single life meant nothing in the great design of things, but for Ignis it meant the end of the world. The world, fortunately and unfortunately, was not aware of the sacrifice Noctis would have to make, was not aware that Ignis would rather sell it out to Ardyn as long as it meant that Noctis was safe.

Cor had to know as much. He’d been there as Ignis and Noctis grew up together. And surely enough, the Marshal narrowed his eyes. “You don’t do things without weighing your options unless you’re upset. In those cases your actual age and lack of experience in most things shows, though normally there’s other people around to keep you from making atrocious decisions. My guess would be it involves Noctis somehow.”

“That is quite correct, Marshal. But permit me one question: Were you aware of the fate of the Chosen?” A heavy silence spread between them. It was all the answer Ignis needed, and he narrowed his eyes before nodding. “I see.”

For a moment the silence persisted. It only made the strange static start up in his head again, but Ignis forced it back. Cor had known, at least partially, what was going on. No one ever mentioned it.

Slowly both men reached for their weapons, and Ignis saw Cor close his eyes to take a deep breath before leaving his hand on the katana’s handle. Ignis, too, set the trident down instead of holding it in an attack position. This was very reminiscent of when he had switched weapons to daggers and lances. Back when Cor and Clarus had supervised the training one day, with the Marshal leaning nonchalantly against a wall while the Shield of the King watched his son and the prince’s advisor effectively settling a petty argument over whether Noctis should really be training with firearms or not from the other day. Cor had not intervened at all while Clarus was pointing out even just the slightest mistake in both Gladio’s form and Ignis’ approach to the issue. It had ended with a tie – Cor had commented on Ignis being a natural with a lance. Ignis could see that same expression on the man’s face now, something between pride and worry as he looked at the wayward advisor.

“What is it that you hope to gain from this, Ignis? You cannot change fate. Heavens know Regis tried, over and over again.”

“What His Majesty lacked was… information.” He was fully aware of how his voice shook. “I intend to gather the intel necessary to--”

“You cannot fight the gods and the Accursed with determination alone, Ignis.”

He took a deep breath. Cracked a horrible smile that likely mirrored the heavy sadness that gripped him – Cor definitely moved slightly, which was enough of a reaction for Ignis to let out a dry laugh. “Perhaps things lost at sea are not nearly as lost as you assume them to be.”

The Marshal narrowed his eyes. “ _You’re_ the reason no one can find the Ring of the Lucii.”

“I won’t hand Noct over to the gods and the Crystal just so they can make a _sacrifice_ out of him. I swore an oath that I intend to keep; that I will keep Noct safe.”

Cor shook his head. His voice was surprisingly low when he spoke again. “Ignis, you’re selling all of Eos to the darkness.”

He had thought about this for ages. It had kept him awake, often the very few words that he could make out when static filled his entire mind was that the darkness needed to be dispelled this way. The star needed this blood price to wash away ancient sins that were not even common knowledge.

Ignis leaned against the Trident of the Oracle and shot a warning glare at Cor when the man’s grip on his katana fastened. “This world means _nothing_ to me without him. Darkness, Ardyn, greed and hubris or the very gods themselves – I don’t _care_ what destroys it in the end if Noctis has to _die_ for it. But it ought to burn if that’s the price to be paid for a peace that can easily be broken again by the next _idiot_ picking a fight with the gods. I _will_ find a way to save Eos without sacrificing Noct. I just need time. I need everything to stay the same as it is until I find a solution.”

“Keeping your enemies closer than your friends… Ignis, the road to hellfire is paved with good intentions, but what you’re doing is _suicidal._ Come _home.”_

Ignis grabbed the trident, whirled it around a little. Traced an arc of green fire through the air with the tip of the weapon. He saw the colour drain from the Marshal’s face for a moment, and Ignis smiled at the man. It likely looked as desperate as he felt.

“No. Indulge me in a fight for the old time’s sake; if you win, drag me _home_ , toss me in a gaol, chain me up and _beat_ the location of the Ring of the Lucii out of me. If I win… we’ll see.”

Cor wordlessly drew his weapon.

* * *

Many people often described the way the Crownsguard fought with one another as a dance. Ignis was fairly certain that Cor and he were engaging in one such dance, parrying one another fast enough that the clinging and clanging of weapons should have long drawn in the Glaives if they truly had made it past the Daemons that patrolled the region. Ignis could feel their hungry eyes on him and Cor.

He knew that he owed the fact that Cor had not yet knocked him flat on his back to the injury he had sustained from the Daemon dragging him downstream. Even though Ignis had the advantage of youthful and hateful vigour, Cor simply had more experience. The man had fought in the war; the brunt of what Ignis had fought had been MTs that dropped from the skies in an attempt to overwhelm them. One-on-one fights were rare, though he and the others often sparred. It was an eerie echo of Ardyn swatting him around, he realised after a few minutes when Cor landed on his injured leg and staggered for a second.

Not even the Immortal was impervious to physical pain. The realisation hit Ignis so hard he held his breath as he swung the trident only for it to meet the katana’s sheath. Cor remained as inhumanely fast as always, and though it was obvious now that he was in pain, he still managed to shove Ignis off.

That was when a new sound joined the gurgle of the river and the distant cackle of Daemons, and Ignis swore his blood froze in his veins that very moment. Cor, too, hesitated when he saw Ignis seize up like that. The sound stopped, and Ignis held his breath, counted the seconds. Normally the man always started speaking after a while.

All he heard was Cor sheathing his katana slowly. There was blood running down his face by now – Ignis’ shoulder had taken a heavy blow, and he was painfully aware of how numb it had become by now. Both of them were exhausted, with Ignis even no longer relying on magic.

“Not quite the sight I expected to behold on this _fine_ day.”

Ignis’ knuckles went white from the way he clutched the trident now. Cor on the other hand simply wiped the blood off his face and furrowed his brows, apparently still uncertain what to make of this situation.

For a long moment both men were staring at the newcomer, not exactly sure what to make of his sudden arrival.

“Don’t look at me like _that._ I am simply here to sate my own curiosity.” Ardyn even had the gall to shrug.

Cor took a few steps backwards, just out of reach of the trident when Ignis blindly lashed out with it.

“You’re angry, aren’t you? This man who knew _all along_ what would happen to _dear Noctis._ This man who helped make you a replacement.” That laugh was ghastly, made Ignis break into cold sweat. “If you lose, he drags you back to where you no longer belong. You’ve crossed quite a few lines in the last year, lines that should have never been crossed in the first place.”

Cor drew his katana again to block a few disoriented swings. Ignis was trying to block the voice out, focus on the fight he had picked that he could not lose for the sake of his own plans – he didn’t succeed.

“Go ahead. Show him what you truly think of any of this. Vent your frustration! Break his legs! Shatter his fingers one by one! Do what Gilgamesh should have done thirty odd years ago!”

He wanted to. That was what terrified Ignis the most. He wanted to give Cor a piece of his mind. Wanted to scream about having been groomed as replacement king, wanted to spit out everything he had ever thought about this. How much it hurt, how betrayed he felt. How every time when he thought about this for too long he saw Noctis smiling up at him after grabbing his hand, with King Regis smiling in the background beside the throne. This was not what Ignis had ever wanted, he would have never been able to do what people expected of him.

Unlike Noctis. Noctis would have done all of this, despite the obvious problems he would have had in the beginning. But Noctis would have persevered, would have learned how to become the king that Lucis deserved. Would have ruled happily even.

He settled for a choked scream as he lunged forward and tried to ignore the sting in his eyes as Cor parried blow after blow. Ignis definitely did not want to do any of the things Ardyn kept suggesting with a laugh, but he wanted Cor to understand that nothing of this would have worked out the way they intended. Indeed, after a few minutes the Marshal’s expression changed from grim to mildly terrified.

A second later the man stumbled, lost his footing as Ignis delivered another blow. He landed with a dull thud and Ignis stomped on Cor’s chest to pin him to the ground. It wasn’t like the man was going to get up again with his injured leg.

Finally he let the tears stream down his face, and Ignis was fully aware of how much of a mess he was. His breath was coming in short gasps between those choked sobs he was trying to hold back. Cor on the ground stared up at him, apparently unable to parse what was going to happen next.

Ardyn merely started clapping, still leaning against the rocks. The river beside them gurgled lowly, in the distance the Daemons howled. The skies above were dark and empty.

“I never… wanted to _replace_ anyone,” he eventually choked out, half yell and half desperate plea for help. “I only wanted to stand beside the throne. Beside _him.”_

Cor and Ignis stared at each other for what felt like an eternity.

“Is that all you want to say?” Ardyn’s voice was… too smooth. Ignis felt the dread run cold in his veins as he turned his head slightly to throw a look at the Accursed. “If you’ve said your piece… _get rid of the trash.”_

The world stopped moving entirely. Ignis was fairly certain for a moment everything came to a perfect standstill as he stared at Ardyn, as Cor moved slightly underneath his foot.

It wasn’t like he hadn’t killed before. He had been trained in the art of getting information via torture if necessary. Ignis was far from someone innocent – soldiers were soldiers, they were on opposing sides of a war. Technically Cor was now, too, at least as far as everyone else was concerned. Ignis had betrayed them, had betrayed Lucis, for the man who was now effectively ordering him to kill the Marshal.

It would have been _so easy_.

Perhaps that was why Ignis could only stare at Cor in cold horror. Minutes passed like that before Ignis removed his foot and turned to look at Ardyn for a split second.

Then he threw the Trident of the Oracle away – perhaps it was just his imagination, but Cor might have sighed in relief.

The silence that spread now was dangerous, the tension ran thick as Ardyn’s and Ignis’ gazes locked. The Accursed’s expression was unreadable as always. That alone was enough of a warning sign that something was _extremely_ wrong now.

“Hmm.”

At long last Ardyn started moving. Even that looked way too smooth. Instead of trying to hide his limp with walking strangely he was walking just as King Regis and Noctis had. While Noctis and a younger King Regis had never really seemed to have any problems with their limp, Ardyn’s movements were reminiscent of the King Regis who had aged beyond his years from feeing the Wall his own life force. Still he reached for the Trident of the Oracle that Ignis had discarded, and the cold horror that had turned his limbs into lead was replaced with a seething hot feeling that Ignis couldn’t quite describe. Ardyn said nothing and simply passed him.

Then he smashed his foot into Cor’s face. The Marshal had sat up, tried to somehow get back to his feet before that. Ignis flinched when Cor hit the ground once more, but the man at least rolled over to get out of Ardyn’s immediate reach. He couldn’t get away with the injured leg anyway. All the Chancellor of Niflheim did was ram the trident into Cor’s shoulder to pin him to the ground and crashed his foot down on the man’s chest.

Ignis found himself still unable to move when Ardyn turned back to look at him.

“Now then.” Still his voice was surprisingly low and smooth. “As I said earlier there are some lines that you crossed that you cannot quite uncross, Ignis. Perhaps you haven’t really noticed, but challenging a man who helped _raise you_ to what is effectively a battle to the death is one of these very lines. Much like a certain _other_ replacement before you you ought to finish what you started.” He yanked the trident out of Cor’s shoulder and rammed it into the leg with the deep Sahagin bite. “He’s injured and effectively helpless – but still you hesitate after you crossed the thresholds of betraying those you love and care about, after slaughtering the Blademaster and a Daemon that was merely sizing you up, despite neither of them having done anything to you, after hunting humans for sport. Whether you intended to merely drive them backwards or actually finish them off completely notwithstanding. But here you are. _Hesitating._ Tell me, Ignis, have you gone this far only to fail at the last step?”

He had to look away. Ignis slowly turned his head and squeezed his eyes shut.

All the anger that he had felt just before as he had fought with Cor had dissipated. He just felt strange now. Very strange indeed.

It wasn’t a good feeling by any means.

“I see.” The sound of a muffled cry and something breaking made Ignis recoil. “Well then, perhaps we ought to _intensify_ your training upon our return. But for now.”

Ignis took a few steps backwards, his eyes still closed. At least he can hear the water to avoid falling into it, though he does not doubt for a second the Sahagin-turned-Daemons below the surface would simply push him back on land. Those creatures answered Ardyn’s every beck and call, after all – and Ignis was supposed to, too.

“But for now… Cor the Immortal. Marshal of the Crownsguard. Bane of the Niflheim army. The first member of the Crownsguard to ever walk out of calling a prince a coward with a _promotion._ A sign of hope, of resistance. Supporter of not one king, not two kings, but no less than three kings. Lestallum and its king depend on you.”

He opened his eyes again to see Ardyn now effectively sitting on Cor’s chest. The Trident of the Oracle was in Ardyn’s hands, its prongs stained with blood. Marshal and Accursed were glaring at one another, though Cor’s eyes were strangely unfocused.

“Oh, it would be fun to send you back to him in pieces. One by one. A finger one morning. Half a leg one afternoon.”

Ignis gagged violently and Ardyn rolled his eyes.

“What a bad time to remember you have a conscience, Ignis. Truly unfortunate. It is simply too late for you to turn back now.”

“Ignis. Go _home.”_

That was an order from the Marshal to a member of the Crownsguard, and Ardyn clicked his tongue before putting a hand across Cor’s mouth. “How touching. Send the boy home as if he isn’t complicit in your _murder._ How disgustingly noble of you, Marshal Leonis. But I’m quite afraid that he softened you up just enough for you to face your maker now. Any other last words?”

Cor remained silent but was staring intensely at Ignis. Ardyn even went as far as removing his hand with a laugh.

He remembered all those times he and Noctis had hurried through the corridors of the Citadel hand in hand, laughing as they were running from the Crownsguard who had been sent to catch the wayward prince and his advisor after they had very deliberately vanished from the prince’s room. All those times those wild games of tag had ended in the hands of Cor, with him often simply picking up Noctis and carrying him away as Ignis ran after the man demanding Noct to be put down. All those times the man had simply picked both kids up together, a tradition that continued well until Ignis hit his first growth spurt at 14. All those times Noctis and Ignis had confided things in the man rather than anyone else – Cor was indeed one of the few people who knew that they were closer than childhood friends, closer than liege and servant.

“Ignis. You can still--”

The silence was deafening, abrupt. Ardyn had gotten up, dusted himself off as if his coat wasn’t drenched in blood. He had driven the trident through Cor’s chest after getting back up.

Ignis wasn’t able to move as the Accursed walked over and put a bloodied finger on his lips.

“Time’s up, my boy. Too late to turn back now.”

He wished he could have screamed as Ardyn ripped part of his sleeve off and dropped the shred of cloth near Cor. All he could do was stand there and let it happen. This was irreversible, even more irreversible than turning his weapon on Noctis had been.

Ardyn simply grabbed his arm and yanked, dragging him off into the darkness. Far, far away from home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FOR BAD END, hit Next Chapter.
> 
> FOR GOOD END, [go here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13910043/chapters/39588172)


	14. PASSAGE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> slower chapter after the last one, hah.  
> i have to admit i'm amused that people assumed cor would live because once upon a time i was just as known for Major Character Death (tm) as one of my best friends is nowadays.
> 
> ardyn's... very flighty. bounces back and forth between asshole and almost melancholic. he's... interesting to wrangle. esp in a slower chapter like this.

He was starting to believe that the Ring of the Lucii was not going to wash up anywhere after all.

Back when Insomnia fell he had not accounted for the fact that the Lucii would not immediately incinerate Nyx Ulric for his hubris. After seeing that the Glaive was allowed to wear it, Ardyn had leaned over to Emperor Aldercapt and suggested promoting the then unconscious Ravus to High Commander and demoting Glauca – if the man survived the night. Even a person as far gone from reason as Aldercapt understood when a man was challenged to a battle to the death.

Ardyn had, effectively, let Lunafreya and the ring go unimpeded because it added some more fun to the equation. She would dutifully carry this cursed trinket around, fully knowing that it had nearly killed her brother and killed two men of the Kingsglaive, one because he was punished for his hubris and the other – her protector whom she had grown rather fond of, it seemed – because he was not of royal blood. There was no way she would _not_ fulfill a dead man’s last wish, and King Regis had asked her to take it to his son. Ardyn had accounted for many possibilities, but Lunafreya Nox Fleuret was a plaything of the gods just as much as Noctis and he were. She would not stray from the given path, not with the Glacian breathing down her neck with her ever infuriating calm smiles. No matter what the Oracle desired, her life would end sooner or later.

In a strange way, Ardyn had showed her mercy when he rammed the knife into her guts. An Oracle’s slow, creeping death with the weight of the covenants slowly but steadily undoing her stamina and then eventually her very flesh was almost a little too cruel. But the gods knew no mercy – the Accursed, in a sense, did.

She had been supposed to deliver the ring to Noctis. They only met at the Altar of the Tidemother, and Ardyn had been certain that the moment Noctis had risen again thanks to Lunafreya to meet the Hydraean on equal grounds this time, that he had already received the ring at this point. But it was nowhere to be seen, not when Noctis came crashing down again, not when the Archaean rose to the occasion to protect the Chosen and the dying Oracle. It had not been there when Ravus Nox Fleuret had lashed out, not been there when Ignis Scientia had won despite the odds stacked against him. Had not been there when Ardyn had decided to act on a whim and offered Ignis death or coming with him.

Where was that _dreadful_ piece of jewellery?

By any means, it should have vanished into the sea. By now something or someone should have picked it up, be it current or Daemon. But it remained gone, as elusive as sunlight was these days.

Ardyn drummed his fingers on Ignis’ shoulder. A month and the advisor’s pain response was dulling down, just as expected. Even though this was an open wound and Ardyn all but had his fingers in it, Ignis barely reacted other than the sharp hiss when he began.

“Mhm.”

He got up and let Ignis drag himself back to his feet. The only bad thing about mortals was the fact that they were so _fragile._ Any more and Ignis was liable to pass out for several days, and Ardyn gave him a critical stare. The advisor did not react to that stare and instead went to look at his shoulder. The same one that Gilgamesh had driven his katana through.

“Come over here.”

There was that moment of hesitation. Ardyn noted it with general distaste; it meant that if it came down to it again, Ignis would hesitate. That was something that couldn’t be allowed – Ardyn had better things to do than to remind a traitor that the time for having a conscience and meddling emotions was long since over. Still, he trotted over – well, limped.

It was rather unorthodox and Ardyn had not used it that much in the last hundreds of years, but as he slammed his hand against Ignis shoulder the advisor visibly relaxed.

At first Ignis had startled away. There were no people in the world who could heal without a connection to the Crystal or the Oracle. Ardyn on the other hand had a gods-given power that had corrupted over time, but the basic healing never really vanished. He could no longer pull people back from the brink of death, could no longer perform quite literal miracles, could not expunge the taint of the Scourge – but he could still knit flesh together. No matter how much it upset his entire system, he needed Ignis _alive._ He was still very much an ace up Ardyn’s sleeve.

Once Noctis found the Ring of the Lucii and marched into this very city to reclaim his throne, Ardyn could pull that card. Depending on how long it took the Chosen to get here, the advisor might have long since lost his human form. The fact that he still had not contracted the Scourge was impressive, really – even just a month with most of Niflheim’s ruling councils and such and everyone had displayed the slight fever that came with a Scourge infection. As far as Ardyn knew not even the Chosen had been completely immune to the Scourge until his father’s powers started waning when he grew up. Nowadays there was no way that Noctis would fall to it, an insurance against the Accursed just in case the man got too impatient. Ignis on the other hand was perfectly mortal. A creature of Eos, a human of Eos; which made him as susceptible to the Scourge as everyone else.

If Ignis was still unaffected, or human enough…

The advisor stepped back. Ardyn only cracked a lopsided grin at him.

* * *

“Was this weapon forged in Lucis?” For someone who had nearly hacked up their lungs yesterday, Ignis was in a surprisingly good mood this day. “The metal is familiar, but the forgery itself is… not like any employed in Lucis.”

Ardyn was deliberately tinkering with an elevator. Mostly because he hated taking the stairs thanks to his family’s unfortunate genetic leg condition. Being alive for so long had let him acquire quite a lot of skills, and messing with modern machinery and electricity was something he had learned in Niflheim. He had been Besithia’s partner in crime to some extend, after all. His hand in the MT project was undeniable; he had fed obsessions, had nudged the man into the right direction until he figured things out himself. He had managed to restore electricity for now and turned his head to look at Ignis.

“You’re forgetting that Lucis as it is did not exist back when this dagger was forged. What you’re seeing is indeed a Lucian forge, but made from materials that came from _outside_ the country at the time.”

His not-so-distant and then very distant relatives had conquered the continent piece by piece over the last two millennia. Lucis had barely been more than a small dab of land, almost entirely been centralised around where Insomnia now stood. A small country that was named after the continent, the only country that had a monarchy. Ardyn had travelled a continent that was said to unite under him once he was done with his duty, something that Somnus had been very well aware of. But the moment the Crystal refused him and branded him too impure and unfit for what he had been promised those dreams shattered for both him and his brother, and the family continued conquering it after that. Most other countries let it happen quietly once Lucis gained enough strength – it wasn’t like they were slaughtering the innocent masses just as Niflheim did nowadays. There was strength in unity, and Niflheim had gained strength by itself, especially when people considered the fact that they sat on a very legitimate treasure trove of ancient Sol creations.

“Mori was forged for the royal family of Lucis, a small country by any means. It was meant to complement a sword that was larger and heavier than the usual sword back then, a hefty blade that _you_ ought to be rather familiar with.”

Ignis blinked as Ardyn went into the elevator to check if everything worked as intended. “… The Sword of the Mystic?”

Ardyn merely let out a laugh as he left the elevator again. It had been so long since he had said the name of his brother’s actual sword. “I’m quite afraid that the weaponsmiths of old were not quite as creative as yours are. Engine Blade; was that what they called the Chosen’s sword? But the Sword of the Mystic, as it is known to you nowadays used to have quite a different name. Now then, I’m fairly certain you know basic old Sol. Surely you can figure out what the sword’s name was.”

Ignis followed him through the entrance lobby, back out and down the steps before he answered.

“Likely the Sol word for life but… I’m afraid I can’t quite recall it right now.”

Ardyn shrugged as he continued walking on ahead, choosing to remain silent until they hit the main streets again. He remembered how glorious the city had looked in daylight, glimmering despite the fact that nearly every single member of the council knew that they were being set up under the false promise of peace. It had glowed with the bustle of life in sunlight. Now in the dark the city looked surprisingly astonishing still, but in a different way. It was the darkness of death that kept it in its grasp, and he nearly started laughing.

“ _Vita;_ that’s the word you’re forgetting.”

A sword named after the word for life – it was hilarious. Perhaps it had been forged with the intention of being in the hands of a protector, but its creator could not have known that both sword and knife would wind up in the hands of a traitor.

“Ah, right. Did the creator tell you these names themselves?”

“No. But I was there when they reached their true owner’s hands, all those years ago.”

He would never forget that picture. His brother, barely more than a child who had hit a growth spurt early at the time, beaming as he received a pair of blades. The very selfsame sword he used to protect the Oracle later in his life, the very knife he drove into Ardyn’s back when the time came. If only he had complained about Somnus receiving a weapon this early. Perhaps it would have changed something.

Not that it mattered now. Ardyn let out a dry laugh and whirled around. Ignis stopped immediately – his reaction time was as impeccable as always, sharpened through the last few weeks.

“Not that it matters in the end. The creator died like the rest of that village; gurgling in agony as his beloved granddaughter wasted away trying to protect those who were still alive. None of these heroes lived to tell the tale – if only their future king had not driven out the healer. Perhaps then they could have lived in quarantine and been saved. But alas, none of those warriors remain, and their teachings died with the Blademaster.”

There was that shudder of terror that went through Ignis. Ardyn noted that with amusement rather than disdain this time.

“Now scram. I’m busy.”

* * *

He knew what awaited him long before the frost crackled behind him. In the dark it was so pathetically easy to see anything that somehow glowed, and the High Messenger always glowed. Not that it was supposed to be seen with the naked eye; but Ardyn was far from a human being at this point. Even in the dark he saw everything as it ought to look, sharp and defined. It was the light that blinded him – he was a Daemon, after all. A Daemon that had been turned away at the gates time and time again, by every single deity on this forsaken planet.

At first he had asked if they could just let him through. They were gods, after all, there had to be something the five of them could do against what the Infernian had wrought. Time and time again they shook their heads – the two gentlest of them. Those fondest of humans; the Glacian and the Fulgurian. Then fury and desperation had hit him by the time Somnus passed away. Even though he had been betrayed and quite literally stabbed in the back, something still told him that the younger brother was not supposed to die before the older. Part of Ardyn wanted to return to Lucis immediately, comfort the family that his brother had left behind. Instead he used that desperate energy to attempt to get to the gate again. And again. And again. And again. It had been the two who cared precious little about mortals who then started telling him to get lost, that his time would come but it was not now – the Hydraean and the Archaean. Eventually Ardyn gave up on killing himself over and over and settled for becoming what they wanted him to be.

One day it was the Draconian himself who had turned him away. Ardyn never once looked at the gate again, waited for them to dismiss him.

There was no denying that Shiva’s words were still the gentlest when she sent him off. Her chill was familiar, in another life it had been comforting even. But that had been so long ago by mortal time measurements that Ardyn had long since associated that chill with that of an enemy.

“The fair lady of ice and snow, all the way out here on her own to converse with _demons?_ Had I not witnessed your physical form’s death at the hands of machinery thirteen years ago I would have asked you if you had a death wish.”

The dark made him stronger. It had taken a while for it to set in, but the other day he had almost effortlessly swabbed Ignis aside like a bothersome gnat. If he had aimed to injure he would have likely broken every bone in the advisor’s body, perhaps even shattered his skull. But Ardyn had not aimed to injure, and Ignis had merely been sprawled on the ground wheezing before he dragged himself back to his feet. Magic training was exhausting, after all, and Ignis was lacking in some departments.

Perhaps it wasn’t enough to face down a god, but Ardyn was well beyond the point of caring. They wouldn’t let him pass on anyway. Two things that could not die could be locked in eternal warfare. If he truly won against Noctis when the time came because the Chosen was simply too weak then, Ardyn had decided long ago, he would take the war to Bahamut’s realm itself.

“Now then. You don’t appear unless you have something to say – say your part.”

He finally turned around to look at Shiva, or rather the Messenger she disguised herself as. He knew for a fact that her mere touch could turn everything into ice if she just willed it. There was frost blooming beneath her feet; she was showing him that attacking her would be futile with that. She refused to say anything, however, kept her eyes closed.

“Come now. I have better things to do than humour a goddess who has nothing to say.”

“Those who would walk the path of darkness oft lose sight of their goals.”

Ardyn rolled his eyes. “Dearest, most beloved Shiva, ever-gentle Glacian. _You’ve got the wrong man.”_

Finally she opened her eyes, the cold stare nearly freezing him in place. But Ardyn was used to the goddess’ tactics after two thousand years of living and dying over and over again. “I come with a warning, Accursed.”

“A warning.”

Out of all reasons for her appearance, a warning had been the thing that Ardyn had expected least. Even back when he had healed the masses the gods had decided to never give anything of value. Their words were always cryptic messes that Ardyn was left to figure out by himself, seldom discussed around the campfire whenever Gilgamesh noticed that something was chewing away at him. None of them ever warned him when he was a healer – they proceeded to ignore him when he was the Accursed. It wasn’t like he was actively sowing chaos and discord way before the time of the Chosen. A few deaths here and there when he got bored of waiting for his executioner were within reason, or so he assumed.

Yet here she stood, the air around her so cold that even he felt it by now. “What you seek to accomplish will not lead to the outcome you desire.”

He merely narrowed his eyes at her. She had closed her eyes again, her pose the same as ever when she pretended to be the High Messenger Gentiana rather than the Glacian.

“Your _warning_ has been duly noted, goddess of ice and sorrow.”

Giving the deity associated with ice a cold shoulder was hilarious, but Ardyn had long since stopped laughing at it. Without another word he turned around to walk away, unbothered by her presence. It was only then that he realised that any mortal would have likely passed out from the cold by now.

“Take heed! That which you seek to return to the Chosen for an even battle lies closer than you dare to imagine.”

Ardyn stalked off, the distant roar of the Accordan sea louder than ever before.

* * *

He was staring into Ignis’ surprisingly green eyes. For a split second their battlefield lay completely still, and Ardyn could hear the other’s heart hammering in his chest from either fear or adrenaline. Likely both. Their faces were mere inches apart, and after that moment passed Ignis’ eyes went wide.

“How… interesting.” It wasn’t meant to be a wheeze, but with a pair of daggers rammed into his chest even the Accursed had to gasp for breath. “You’ve gotten faster.”

That had to be an understatement. Three months since the day he had dragged Ignis away from the river. Three months before Ignis, once the shock left his system, had started screaming and struggling against Ardyn’s grip, had started clawing at his own face and then the Accursed’s face. Three months since Ardyn had started tossing him around in order to teach him to attack without thinking – and finally they reached the point where Ignis’ body reacted on its own before his mind ever caught up.

The mind had caught up now, and he watched as the advisor let go of the uneven pair of weapons he wielded for this session. They were very much embedded in Ardyn’s lungs, and he cracked a lopsided grin at the now terrified-looking young man.

“The only thing that is still off is your aim. Go for the heart, not the lungs – unless you like seeing your targets suffer.” Ardyn yanked Ignis’ knife out of his body and tossed it onto the ground before Ignis’ feet. A trail of black blood followed it, and he shrugged before removing the second.

His vision was swimming, a very familiar feeling. Dying slowly like that had been a pathetically painful ordeal in the past. Ardyn had long since numbed to the pain of that, even as he drew in rattling and wet gasps of air. There was that familiar flash before his eyes as he deliberately sunk to his knees. This was going to take a while unless they sped this up. While he did not care about the pain at all he hated how long-winded deaths like these were.

“Do yourself a favour – finish your job.”

Ardyn had to admit it was hilarious how Ignis did not hesitate a moment before grabbing one of the daggers and tossing it squarely into the Accursed’s head. Even as everything went completely black and he was once more faced with the painfully familiar Beyond once his eyes focused he fought back his own laughter. He did not turn around to see which one of the Six waited at the gates to send him back, and whichever one it was, they remained silent. He barely even managed to take a deep breath this time before the space around him violently shifted, filled his vision with a darkness no other person on Eos knew. Hundreds upon thousands of voices joined in that familiar chorus that barred him from going where dead men went. Through the blackness he saw a glint of silver steel and he reached for that.

Reality returned to him as his hand wrapped around the dagger Ignis had pulled out of his head a moment ago. He hacked, wheezed, and finally started laughing as the familiar feeling of his human face slipping around him settled in. The fact that he spat black blood onto the ground barely even seemed to matter, but when his eyes finally focused he saw the utter disgust on Ignis’ face.

It made the situation only funnier somehow.

It had been Somnus and the Oracle who had declared him a monster after the Crystal rejected him. It had been the people who had formed a mob that went against him, and he would never forget that look his own brother shot him that day. It had been the same mixture of disgust and horror that Ignis Scientia was currently displaying, and once more Ardyn was faced with the fact that those two were rather similar when he thought about it for too long.

Oh, he hated that man. He hated him so much. Ardyn wanted to carve something into his face, slowly break every bone in his body. Scatter what remained in Lestallum and leave those bloody bits and pieces for the Chosen to find. Unfortunately Ignis was useful and those were Ardyn’s quite literal inner demons – well, Daemons – speaking. He shoved the thought to the back of his head; a skill he had acquired after hundreds of years with them. Every time he was forced back into his body as it regenerated this happened.

He squeezed the knife, perhaps as a means to pacify the voices a little more. The sheer horror on Ignis’ face was worth it. If only that man was Noctis; perhaps they would shut up forever then. Ardyn simply watched his own blood run down the blade, over the hilt, across Ignis’ hand for a minute or so before he finally let go.

Ignis simply let the dagger fall to the ground and _gagged._

Violently so.

“And here I thought you had finally made some good progress,” Ardyn muttered, his voice still raspy. “I thought you were trained in the finer arts of torture.”

“Training or no, people with that kind of wound are not supposed to get up again.”

“Cor Leonis certainly hasn’t.”

“…!” Ignis’ head had shot back to stare at Ardyn, and the expression itself could have killed.

“Oh, did I hit a sore spot? _Many_ apologies.”

There was that moment where Ignis was clearly considering grabbing the knife he had dropped and plunging it back into Ardyn’s forehead. It was so blatantly obvious – he was rather bad at hiding his intentions at this point. Most people who no longer dealt with other humans were, unless they were specifically training to keep their facade up.

He simply chose to raise a hand and put it against Ignis’ forehead. A moment later he had dipped into his own powers – violet miasma engulfed his hand, and Ignis recoiled with a hiss. Fell backwards and landed on his back.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

“I’ve not quite yet fallen so deep as to commit,” Ignis sat back up and rubbed his forehead with a glare, _“regicide.”_

“So, too, claimed Titus Drautos a mere day before he plunged his sword into Regis Lucis Caelum CXII’s chest in front of the eyes of Oracle Lunafreya Nox Fleuret and Kingsglaive member Nyx Ulric while disguised as Niflheim’s General Glauca.”

Ardyn stood back up and kicked the knife away. Ignis on the ground was frowning deeply by now, clearly trying to think of something.

Eventually the advisor settled for a deep sigh. “Well, unlike General Glauca I _could_ commit regicide several times in a row. Which I shan’t, Your Majesty.”

“Good boy.”

* * *

“Oh, you do look unhappy.”

“...” A glare.

“Well then, is there anything you have to report, Ignis?”

For a moment Ignis looked away, his hands curled into fists. Then he shook his head slowly. “They’re all dead just as you ordered.”

“My, my. Is there anything you can show to support your claims?”

“… Ask the Daemons of the Vesperpool. For now, you’ll have to believe what I say.”

* * *

Perhaps it was unwise to saunter through the streets like this, but if there was one thing Ardyn enjoyed about his powers it was the fact that he was able to wear just about any disguise that he could think of. It was barely more than a magical glamour, something that contorted how he appeared to other people. Most people simply did not see through it – only two theoretically could, but neither of them were in the city that day.

Ardyn had seen them in the field earlier, side by side after they had been on opposing sides for so long. Ravus Nox Fleuret and Noctis Lucis Caelum had never once been friend, but the fact that they were going after Daemons together had to mean something, and Ardyn was going to listen in on Lestallum for the time being. No one paid attention to a stranger who would vanish later. Many people arrived and then left after a few hours. Quite a few people still fought for themselves out there, and equally as many had since moved into the city to be where the others were. Even a handful more Niffs had arrived by now out of their own free will.

After the rocky start the people of Lucis, Accordo and Tenebrae had accepted the few survivors. Some hunters called Lestallum the city of the people, rather than a Lucian stronghold by now, which was fascinating but expected.

A bunch of children were animatedly talking about the king and the Oracle’s brother having left the city together, while their parents watched with tired eyes. The darkness was getting to some people, and Ardyn could _feel_ the pulse of an infection from one of these parents.

“It’s good to see His Majesty recovered after the last few losses.” He was standing around a corner, listening in on the parents of these rowdy brats who were now playing tag.

“They have been rather heavy… An entire hunting party, wiped out like it was nothing, those Niff refugees, the Altissian soldier who was taking care of the greenhouses… All of that so soon after the Marshal’s death.”

They continued talking about the last few losses – all of them things that Ardyn himself had calculated, and with the exception of the Niffs had killed himself. Something to keep the people of Lestallum on their toes, because the last thing he needed was a bunch of people lured into the false belief that their precious city was safe against all and everything and that humanity could go unchallenged as long as they barred themselves up. The Altissian soldier had been crucial for that; this was not the first time Ardyn had sneaked into Lestallum like this. The parents watched their children run past.

“Have you heard? Some people are saying that it’s a Lucian who was involved with how Marshal Leonis died.”

“Yeah, I have. Same guy who attacked the Lady Amicitia, apparently. No one’s confirmed or denied this happened, but a Glaive said there was evidence that it wasn’t a Daemon that had killed Marshal Leonis. Someone suggested the missing Chancellor of Niflheim, but someone else said that it was the king’s missing advisor. Apparently those two are working together. Or so the rumour says.”

“Well, it _is_ true that no one’s seen Ignis Scientia since he went missing in Altissia or Niflheim…”

Ardyn had heard enough. He whisked through the streets with a smile on his face, waved the guard at the gates farewell and vanished into the darkness once more.


	15. the lamenting march, the rising light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SO HUH FUNNY THING ABOUT THOSE CONFIRMED DLC EPISODES AND THEIR... WORKING TITLES... I ACTUALLY... NEEDED PART OF THAT for literally like the last line in the chapter.  
> the chapters also longer than i intended it to be
> 
> BUT ONE THING BEFORE I UNLEASH THIS ONTO YALL  
> seriously, a big shoutout and thanks to all readers; yalls words are really. good? im so very? flattered and happy everyones enjoying it so much?

Predictably enough, someone stopped Noctis at the gates. He had expected Ravus, Gladio, Prompto or Aranea maybe.

Not Loqi Tummelt.

In the past they had run into the young Niff general a few times, with Loqi almost always hidden by the Magitek engine or other machinery he controlled with a precision that told of years of practice. Even though he was around their age, there had always been something off about the man. The way he acted, the way he spoke. Over the past few months Noctis had learned more about the Niffs than he would have otherwise – and one of the first things he had learned was that Niff nobility was a tad more extreme than Lucian nobility. They were obsessed with a code of honour, to a point that those who fell from grace were encouraged to try again until they succeeded or died. Some even went as far as dying in shame but on their own terms; suicides after a failed missions were rampant under Iedolas Aldercapt’s rule.

Having failed and lived through the defeat, Loqi Tummelt had been faced with the fact that he had disgraced himself and his family’s name. Not that there was much to be salvaged, it had already been ruined a long time ago. The son of a general who decided to end his shame rather than support his family, and Loqi had become obsessed with restoring his family’s honour by hunting down the man who defeated his father and let him live to deal with the aftermath.

“You going out there will only incite more panic than strictly necessary,” Loqi said with a blank expression, “Your Majesty.”

Noctis shoved the Niff’s arm away. “I’m done sitting around idly waiting for everyone to come home in one piece! Cor’s out there, likely too injured to make it back by himself, and you’re telling me to _sit still and wait!?”_

Loqi’s entire body was covered in scars. Burns that bloomed across his face and arms like some sort of hideous reminder of his lost honour. He had lived through so many explosions that it made the Niffs claim that he had the Infernian’s luck on his side. Still, that frown was deep, deeper than any expression he had ever seen from the otherwise reserved Niff.

“I understand. Trust me, I understand. But you’ve not been out there yet – a grave oversight, honestly. Your kingdom is not what it used to be, King Noctis, and the shock might hinder you more during the search for your missing marshal than your emotions will. I’m afraid I can’t let you pass.”

“Did Ravus sic you on me!?”

The Niffs still responded to the High Commander first and foremost. The country had effectively been a military state, and with the emperor gone the next best thing was the prince of Tenebrae who had risen through the ranks of their army until he was promoted to the highest possible position underneath the emperor. Considering that Verstael Besithia was also missing, Ravus was the closest thing to a leader that Niflheim had at this point.

“I can assure you this comes from my own observations.” Noctis didn’t even know that Niffs could sound that soft. “Letting emotions cloud your judgement while on unknown territory is a mistake you will pay dearly for.”

The unspoken ‘I would know’ was what made Noctis take a step back and re-evaluate the situation.

Every available person had been urgently dispatched. Or so Noctis had thought. He furrowed his brows as he took a few steps away from Loqi, the Niff’s expression still unchangingly frigid.

“Why are you not out there anyway?”

“Your Shield wouldn’t let me.”

It was no secret that one General Tummelt had hunted down the Lucian Marshal Leonis, only to never succeed. There were some petty feuds between military men, but none were as famous as the one between the Tummelt family and Cor – though, according to Ravus, Caligo Ulldor’s petty drive to get revenge on Ignis had almost rivalled that of his fellow general. Knowing Gladio he had likely wanted to keep friction to a minimum; Loqi Tummelt was not a fan of Cor Leonis, and most Lucians still did not trust the Niffs. Noctis himself certainly didn’t, and Gladio was likely assuming that Loqi would be sabotaging the search somehow because of his personal issues with Cor.

“Come, Your Majesty. Let’s get away from the gate. Standing here will only make your anxieties spike.”

Again the unspoken ‘I would know’ was left hanging heavily in the air as Loqi started leading Noctis away. He made a mental note to find out more about this man later. When Cor was back in one piece.

* * *

They all returned with nothing to show for it, one by one. Gladio in particular looked like he was about to burst into frustrated tears, his stress once more coming to a peak. Noctis merely offered him his hand quietly, which Gladio understood and took. They didn’t do that very often, and normally Noctis was the one on the receiving end of these gestures, but the fact that Gladio smiled a little as he went back to the gate to wait for Iris was enough for him.

Time passed so slowly it was starting to get agonising.

It had come to nearly a complete standstill by the time the last pair returned. And the way they looked, they had nothing good to report. Aranea Highwind was a woman who had seen her fair share of battles. She was a mercenary, someone who had fought in the war for the empire that had raised her. She was devoted as long as the money was right, skilled – many had died around her.

She was covering his mouth with her hands and avoided looking at Noctis. She whispered something to Ravus and marched on ahead, a grim expression on her face as she effectively made a beeline for where the others were resting.

Ravus looked pale, paler than usual. The tension in the air was heavy as Noctis looked at the much taller man with a dreadful feeling of foreboding.

“I… we found him.” He looked around with a deep frown and went paler still. “Where are the others?”

“Resting up.” Noctis was starting to shake; he had just been pacing on his own again. “Why?”

The High Commander took a deep breath and slowly exhaled before shaking his head. “I had… hoped I wouldn’t have to deliver that news to you on your own.”

Noctis was fully aware he was staring at Ravus with side eyes and nothing but terror plastered on his face as he stood there quivering like a leaf in the wind. All of this was just confirming his worst fears before Ravus even spoke; his eyes were already stinging.

“Marshal Leonis is,” Ravus closed his eyes, “dead.”

He knew Ravus wouldn’t lie. Not about something like this, not after he had taken them to Gralea without any strings attached, not after he hard returned them to Lucis after everything that had happened. Not after he had spent so much time here rather than his home country that was finally _free_ , as ironic as that sounded. Still, the irrational part of Noctis that somehow still existed a year after Altissia and Gralea, the part that wanted to believe there was still something messing with him rather than the cold truth was screaming in protest.

After what felt like an eternity Noctis shook his head. “You’re--”

“I’m not lying, Noctis.” Ravus still had his eyes closed and his lips were in a thin line. “I _wish_ I was. Truly, I wish I was.”

He was staring at the man now. The sheer hatred bubbling up from the pit of his stomach was irrational, and Noctis knew full well it was. But something told him to attack Ravus for saying these vile things, to make him take it all back. That were was no way any of this would have ever happened.

Noctis never got that far – the second he took a step forwards with his hands curled into fists, someone wrapped their arms around him from behind. He started struggling, clawed at the tattooed arms.

“He’s lying! He has to be lying! Let go! Let go, he’s lying and-- Gladio, let go!”

That shrill voice sounded wrong even in his own ears as he dug his fingers into Gladio’s arms. Hells, if Gladio hadn’t made certain to grab him in a way he had no way of reaching him properly, Noctis would have bitten his Shield just to get his hands on Ravus. Because of his compromised position he missed the long look Ravus and Gladio exchanged; the Shield and the High Commander were not friends by any means but they were finally united by a common purpose, shared a common pain now.

Ravus took a step backwards, perhaps in an attempt to quell Noctis’ rising rage, but all it made him do was struggle harder.

“Liar! You’re lying! Cor wouldn’t… he wouldn’t just! Gladio, let _go!”_

The first tears were rolling down his cheeks, hit Gladio’s tattooed arms.

There were some very basic rules about the world he had been raised in – his father had no secrets, Ignis would never betray him, Cor wouldn’t leave and die, the sun would always rise.

It had only taken a little more than a year for all of this to come completely undone, and Noctis was stuck between hysteric screaming and hysteric giggling. Ravus’ eyes opened for a moment but as soon as he saw the supposed King of Light he kind of grimaced and closed them again.

“Gladiolus, is there a chance you can get him to his room? Aranea and I will… have to…”

“… It’s that bad, huh.”

“It certainly is not… a pretty sight. Especially not for _either_ of you.”

Ravus and Aranea had only been here for a year. Noctis sobbed loudly as Gladio dragged him away, continued calling Ravus a liar until the man vanished from his sight.

* * *

Plenty of people had died. This wasn’t the first time Noctis saw someone whose death had been gruesome – hells, Noctis had nearly suffered one of these deaths when he had been a child. Gladio had apologised profusely when Noctis stopped struggling to let out a whimper of pain; being dragged around while fighting against the iron grip of someone usually made the pain in his back flare up. In a way the sharp sting had calmed his nerves enough to let Gladio loosen the grip and instead followed his friend and Shield back to his room. There they had waited for a few minutes, with his heart hammering so loudly in his chest that Gladio definitely heard.

The man had in fact not looked that nauseated since the day Insomnia fell. There was something absolutely gut-wrenching about seeing Gladio lose his strong facade, and Noctis curled up tighter as he sat there on the bed. The only thing that was missing was rocking back and forth and it would have been a perfect recreation of the days following the fall of Insomnia.

Eventually someone knocked on the door – Prompto, telling them to come with him. They all looked like they had seen a ghost as they went to where injured or killed hunters were generally taken when they returned or were returned to Lestallum.

There was an entire gaggle of people inside, from Crownsguard to hunter to commoner, all of them eerily silent when Noctis entered flanked by Gladio and Prompto.

Ravus and Aranea at least had had the sense to stay away – there were only Lucians in here. Whatever information they had they would have likely passed on to Monica, considering the woman looked like she had bawled her eyes out together with Dustin.

The silence as Noctis approached was stifling. It was tense. All those people likely looked as bad as Noctis himself did, but still most of them backed out of his way as he approached them, some of them even stumbling. It were the senior members – senior _survivors_ – of the Crownsguard who did not move away, together with a few of the senior Glaives. They stared at their king for a few moments in utter silence until Noctis licked his very dry lips.

“What did… Commander Nox Fleuret and Commodore Highwind have to say before they left?”

He heard Prompto awkwardly shuffle behind him. Somewhere in the crowd Iris let out a muffled sob, immediately followed by her Glaive friend trying to soothe her.

Monica stepped forward and offered Noctis something.

A torn sleeve.

Noctis sunk to his knees as he stared at the familiar print.

“He… wouldn’t… He _wouldn’t!_ Not _Cor!”_

But the fact that he was holding the a scrap of one of Ignis’ shirts remained. In hindsight he was grateful that Monica and the others were blocking his view – he would have likely thrown up if he had to see Cor dead and gone now.

* * *

It was a safety measure they had started adopting once Ravus had reluctantly shared what the Oracles had known all along. All over the planet it was a custom to incinerate bodies, leaving nothing but ash. Most people assumed it was a tribute to one of the Hexatheon that originated from the times of Solheim before that civilisation fell. Noctis stood there all but clinging to Gladio’s right side as his sister clung to his left side after the fire had been doused. The High Commander said that if the bodies were not either incinerated to checked by an Oracle there was a very high chance of the Scourge reanimating that soulless husk of flesh, a high chance of it turning into a hideous and grotesque creature that would tear the living apart if left unchecked.

“It would be… a gross tarnishing of this man’s memory,” Ravus had whispered, “if that were to happen to him.”

Not that Ravus or the Niffs would ever truly understand how gross this would be – but they were aware of that. Noctis appreciated them staying away, as did most Lucians.

Both Amicitias and the king they were sworn to protect went to sit down at the fountain in front of the Leveille afterwards. Rumours had started flying about following people confirming that Marshal Leonis had died in the line of duty, helping retrieve what the people here needed to live. Rumours of something terrifying slithering about in the dark, waiting to pick them off one by one and not a single of them would be able to defeat it. That this something were the vengeful spirits of the Lucian council possessing Daemons, waiting to pick off Daemons and those who had survived the Fall. It wouldn’t be long until voices would suggest the still missing Ignis Scientia, though there was one very easy way to quell this kind of rumour immediately.

It had been Iris who had whispered it. “We should announce Ignis dead until we learn if he… if he’s still alive or being framed, controlled, whatever.”

Noctis had considered it ever since they had started walking, with Gladio patting his head as they sat there at the fountain.

“… Iris is right,” he breathed out eventually. The younger Amicitia had fallen asleep leaning against her brother, dark shadows under her eyes. “Until we get… conclusive evidence…”

“And what abut Rhea Scientia?”

Noctis blinked and sighed deeply. “It’s not like that woman’s still right in the head.”

“It might break her completely. She’ll run off to find him if we just announce him dead without a body to show for it.”

“… We’ll have to take that risk.”

Gladio nodded and squeezed Noctis’ shoulder a little. Noctis was fairly certain he would have tried cracking a grin at his Shield under different circumstances, but all he felt right now was a hollow pain somewhere in his chest.

* * *

“Take me with you.”

He would have expected verbal protests. A reminder that it was best for him to stay inside, where the people could see him and remember that eventually he would banish the darkness once destiny saw it fit for him to get the Ring of the Lucii. After locking himself away for a week to grieve by himself, he was surprised that none of the people currently on their way out of Lestallum were telling him to stay where he was.

He hadn’t had the time to hole himself up like that after Altissia and Gralea. He had spent his time crying before sleep; but right now he felt rejuvenated somehow. He had come to terms with a great many things, and had realised that he was needed out in the field just as much as he was needed out in the city. The people needed a reassurance that their king would be ready to bring the light back to Eos when the time came. And someone who only stayed in the city moping and being bored obviously was not the kind of king the people needed.

Eventually Gladio dragged his fingers through his hair with a sigh. Prompto and Iris both shifted their weights from one foot to the other, and Ravus was staring at him out of the corners of his eyes.

“As your Shield, I gotta say no. At least not for this mission Prom, Iris and I are going on.” Those three were going to check something further down the stream where Aranea and Ravus had found Cor; the mercenary and some of her men were going to join them in a bit.

Noctis crossed his arms. “I wasn’t asking you, Gladio. I was _ordering_ the High Commander to take me with him.”

High Commander and Shield exchanged glances, and Noctis saw a small smile on Ravus’ face when he eventually sighed and shrugged. “I’m afraid a training run will he horrendously dull, but be my guest.”

Noctis huffed proudly as he looked at Gladio.

“Fine. Just don’t do anything stupid – we’ll be back as fast as we can.” He definitely did not miss that relieved smile those three shot one another before they left, barely more than an almost casual ‘see ya’ on their lips.

They had all let him grieve in peace, even Ravus. The High Commander was looking at Noctis now with his arms crossed and then eventually nodded.

“Good to see you back.”

“Thanks for giving me the space.” He was genuinely grateful for once and smiled at Ravus.

Ravus gestured vaguely as he turned around to walk towards the only way out of Lestallum for people lacking airship access. “I didn’t give you that space after Luna’s passing because you needed _someone_ to knock some sense into you. But I see my words back then were not… for nothing.”

They nodded at each other. Ravus had suffered silently and on his own, for years as he rose through the ranks of the army. Noctis was fairly certain that in his dreams he saw his mother’s death over and over, whatever he and Ignis had chanced upon at the Altar of the Tidemother. Most of what had truly happened in Altissia remained a mystery except for the broad explanation Ravus had given them on their way to Gralea. Noctis did not have to suffer on his own. Ravus had been right that the people needed him more, but the longer he thought about it, the more he started to realise that this is what Luna would have wanted him to do, her being dead or not.

He summoned his sword and carried it around as soon as they left the city. The soldiers stationed there had given Ravus and Noctis odd glances, but they had let them pass. Gladio likely had told them to on his way out, and Noctis was grateful that he had his Shield and friend. Ravus’ weapon was in its sheath.

“So, what’s your training run about? You said it’d be boring.”

They had walked through the tunnel with absolutely nothing challenging them. Noctis had heard that sometimes the Daemons popped in as soon as people left the safety of light, but as they stepped out of the tunnel, nothing happened. The streets were desolate and empty, though Noctis noted that something heavy had fallen here and the impact of it had left cracks in the street. Likely an Iron Giant or one of its ilk – he vaguely remembered Libertus Ostium talking about a fight in this place a few months ago.

“It is, comparatively,” Ravus said as he surveyed their surroundings. “There will be no grand heroics, and refugees who make it this far generally can carry on to Lestallum on their own. As for what it is about, it is…” A flicker of golden light danced across Ravus’ remaining hand, and Noctis raised an eyebrow. “This… _gift…_ Luna and mother left me.”

Noctis had never seen Luna heal. He’d heard reports of it, naturally, how soft golden light chased the darkness out of a person’s system. How the relief was near immediate, but how those people also felt that this power could easily tear them apart if she but willed it to. He had always wanted to see her heal, see how serene her smile was. He barely remembered Oracle Sylva doing the same to him when he had been a child; the only memory that remained a soft warmth that felt like the world was going to be okay.

He would never see Luna heal, and Ravus would never have the exact same powers.

“Right, you trained with the Glaives before, didn’t you? Did they help at all?” Catching Libertus had not been hard, but trying to get the man to approach the High Commander was harder than expected. There was likely something that the man chose not to tell – and Noctis could accept that. Eventually Libertus had caved, even if he looked less than happy about it.

Ravus snuffed the light out by closing his hand. “After you asked Libertus Ostium of the Kingsglaive to tell me about how his adoptive sister learned it properly, it… helped, yes.” Again there was something that Ravus was not telling, but Noctis was not expecting him to. “It definitely helped, actually.”

He opened his hand again, a small ball of light nearly immediately forming. Noctis was kind of mesmerised by how beautiful it looked, like liquid gold just about ready to spill over. Ravus held still for a moment before whipping around suddenly and stretching out his arm again. The ball of light went flying; it did not have a mark to be hit and kind of fizzled out in the distance.

“… Though not as much as I would like it to.”

Noctis remembered his own lessons in Elemancy. It had taken them a few years to realise that it was better if he bottled everything up quite literally and tossed it at people; a stark difference between him and his father. He also remembered that technique as that of Crowe Altius.

“I see. Well, maybe that’s the wrong approach. Magic’s fickle.”

“So I unfortunately had to learn.”

“Have you been going out here to try things out for long?”

“Three months.”

That explained why Ravus was so extraordinarily hard to get a hold of. Noctis tapped his chin, trying to think back to his training. All he could recall right now were his father’s kind words about it when he once again failed to conjure up lightning in that open space. This flash of memory was immediately followed by that of Ignis gently pushing him into his bed after he had entered stasis, the loving and doting care he took of Noctis as he recovered…

Noctis forced the thought out and focused back on his father’s words back then. Regis always talked about magic as if it was something that was alive that they couldn’t fully control, but something that they could coerce into cooperating for a while. Just as Noctis never learned how to manifest shields and walls around himself or other people, Regis had never really learned how to warp far distances. Magic was always different, always fickle.

“Hey,” he said once he realised something, “you use Magitek, right?”

Ravus eyed him cautiously. “Considering it makes up my second arm, yes. Why?”

“Like, I’ve not idea how Magitek works and all that. But you do. Maybe if you approach magic similarly, you’ll have an easier time. Everyone’s got a different approach to it, Cor always used to say, and maybe you’re not meant to be a long-range mage. My dad was, Crowe Altius was. … Ignis wasn’t.”

Ravus crossed his arms, flesh on metal, and he narrowed his eyes. “What are you trying to say here, Noctis?”

He gestured vaguely, once more painfully aware that he wasn’t good with words and that he was still rather shaken by what happened. Just remembering that Cor had supervised the magic training when his father or Clarus hadn’t been able to make it put a weight on his shoulders that he thought he had left at home.

“What I’m trying to say is… it took all of us a while to learn how to use what powers we’ve been given. None of the Glaives started masters at the art, though they have a natural… aptitude, Ignis called it, for it. You just need to figure out what works best for you, and since you already use something else maybe you could like… base your spellweaving on that.”

It was Ravus’ turn to tap his chin – Noctis was rather amazed when the man mumbled an agreement and said that he hadn’t considered that approach before because there was something else he wanted to do with magic. What it was Ravus didn’t tell.

They returned to Lestallum after two hours and several smaller Daemons that got too curious about the two humans standing in the middle of a desolate street.

* * *

It was quiet for a while.

Most of the people still offered him their condolences about the Marshal, but eventually Noctis managed to reminisce about the good memories rather than think about the man who had been skewered through the chest – Iris and he especially traded back and forth stories about Cor whenever their rather busy schedules allowed them to sit together somewhere. Most of his time he spent with Ravus, slowly but steadily realising that he got along with him rather well. They had their differences and Ravus was hilariously bad at talking about things that weren’t harsh business, but Noctis came to really, truly enjoy their bouts together in the darkness.

There was something refreshing about teaching someone who wasn’t borrowing his own power or his late father’s power that had been unleashed because of Luna. Ravus’ magic was that of an Oracle, thinned down and weaker than most other things, but fascinating in its own way. Noctis learned a lot about the magic of Oracles; namely that there wasn’t a name for most of these things they did. The healing spells all were simply called healing magic, and as far as Oracles usually were concerned they did not have anything that harmed living beings. As Noctis learned, the light of an Oracle was rather potent even if it was just Ravus himself casting that – the man was rather humble about it, claiming that Luna had been infinitely better, more precise, faster and overall better at that than him.

Ravus in turn learned about Lucian Elemancy, how it wildly differed between people, how to differentiate between members of the Crownsguard and the Kingsglaive, even if that was getting harder and harder nowadays. Under Gladio those two groups kind of merged together with the hunters, and most of the general populace already simply called all of them hunters to begin with.

The only ones who really kept them apart were the members of these groups; the hunters proud of their knowledge about Lucis, the Crownsguard known for their undying devotion to the crown, the Kingsglaive known for their impressive feats in battle.

It were the Glaives who eventually broke that peace. Specifically, something about Libertus Ostium did.

His group had gone to check out something rather close to the crown city; Keycatrich in particular. The old settlement likely had something of value still in these caves; Noctis and Prompto both remembered a more or less functioning power generator and several containers that held electricity somewhere further in the cave. When the group returned they had everything that Noctis had requested, but something about Libertus had been odd. A day later Noctis decided to catch the man before he went out with Ravus again, and the Glaive nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw Noctis.

“Have you… have you slept at all?” He definitely didn’t look like it, and Noctis furrowed his brows as the jumpy man was clearly looking for a way out of the conversation.

“I… not really, Your Majesty.”

“Any particular reason for that?”

Libertus did not answer and avoided looking at Noctis, which made him even more curious. It was no secret that the man was hiding something disturbing – most Glaives were; all of the people involved with Niflheim also were. But it was very unlike the man to be so jumpy about it, and it was very out of character for Libertus to lose sleep over something.

“Did you find something in Keycatrich?”

The long, awkward silence that ensued told Noctis that they had found something, or at least Libertus had.

Before he could pry further, he heard someone run towards them. Noctis turned around only to see Ravus jog over to them.

“There’s been reports that someone saw Gentiana near the gates.”

Normally people did not see the High Messenger; and even then Gentiana was excellent at dodging people – and questions. If someone just standing watch at seen her, then something was off, and Ravus likely realised that. Libertus let out a soft curse, and Noctis started to realise that the gods likely were involved with whatever was ailing the Glaive now.

He ordered the man to come with him and Ravus as they went to check out whether Gentiana was truly somewhere outside of Lestallum or not, and Libertus followed hesitantly. It wasn’t until they managed to convince the man at the gates to let them out to check if the woman he had seen was still around that Libertus spoke again.

“The king buried in that place...”

Noctis turned around to face the man. “The Founding King, yes. What about him?”

The main street of Lestallum was quiet. It was just the three of them looking for Gentiana, and nothing and no one else. At least until that very moment.

Noctis felt it before he heard the telltale sound of something appearing; but the sound this time was so very strange that he couldn’t help but cautiously look around. Hundreds of puddles of ichor spread on the ground surrounding them, even though there were less than a few metres between them and the way back into Lestallum. Even Ravus inhaled sharply as he looked around. In that dense a number even the most pathetic tier of goblins turned into something dangerous.

Noctis summoned his blade, Ravus drew his out of its sheath. Libertus looked around as the goblins slowly rose to their feet, cackling and wheezing sounds being all they heard. Noctis was seizing up the situation.

“If we can bunch them up, we can likely send them back to hell in a single blast,” Ravus muttered, “but those look… uncooperative. More intelligent than the average goblin. I fear ‘Gentiana’ was a trap to get me out of the city.”

Gentiana had always been with the Nox Fleuret family. She was the High Messenger, after all, and even just being born into the family gave one the ability to see her. According to some of the older Tenebraens around Lestallum Ravus had often tried to keep his sister and one Gentiana safe, but no one knew who exactly this mysterious woman was.

Noctis nodded. “You’re right, of course.”

“Bunching them up… bunching...” Libertus sighed and rubbed his eyes. “I might just have the… solution for that. And it kind of helps the explanation I owe ya.”

The man was not known for heroics. He lacked the sheer strength his best friend Nyx had had, and he was nowhere near as good a mage as the woman he considered his adoptive sister was. But Crowe had died in action and Nyx remained missing to this day, had likely died in Insomnia as it fell. It was a story Libertus did not talk about, after all. He was overall average and blessed with just enough stubborn will to make it through hardships that few others would have lived through. Noctis didn’t spend a lot of time with the man, but he had heard from other Glaives, repeatedly, that Libertus was the one keeping them together after _everything._ Whatever this mysterious everything they were talking about was another secret all Glaives made certain not to tell anyone.

Seeing him fiddle with some charms attached to his uniform was bewildering. Once he found the one he looked for – a design that looked thoroughly not Galahdian – he grabbed it and raised his hands slowly.

Noctis blinked and missed the spell he cast, but there was the unmistakable pull of familiar magic. He and Ravus stared as an invisible force pulled in the countless goblins around them, just close to where Libertus stood. The man was backing away slightly and the Daemons were fruitlessly trying to escape the strange magical pull.

“Now, Majesty, Commander!”

A blast of fire and a comparatively small pillar of light did indeed send the Daemons back to hell. Ravus and Noctis stood there side by side and exchanged a confused glance before they turned back to the Glaive. The man still looked tired, perhaps even more tired than before. He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly after he reattached the charm to the chain.

A moment of silence passed before Libertus shrugged and let his shoulders droop.

“As it turns out, the princess… the Oracle, I mean… she did somethin’ to unleash sealed old powers. But she also kinda unleashed those buried and bound to their tombs. The reason I didn’t sleep was ‘cause the Founding King kinda haunted my dreams after he granted me this here thing… y’know, he taught me how to use that, some sorta destiny hogwash, and so on.”

* * *

“Hey, Luna.”

Of course the notebook didn’t answer. It was kind of sad that he was talking to it as he sat on the roof again.

“So people are getting the old kings’ protection now. Ravus said he’s gonna check Tenebrae just in case the Trident of the Oracle wound up there with Gentiana, if the Oracle themselves perhaps has a ward to give, and invited me along for it.”

Noctis stretched and closed the notebook.

“Somehow the Mystic really fits Libertus. As does the Just for Iris.”

He put it beside him and sighed deeply, fighting the urge to hug his knees to himself as he sat on the roof.

“Y’know… people said Cor would’ve gained the Warrior’s protection without even trying, and they’re right. There’s still this gaping hole he and you left, and there’s no one who can fill these holes. … Ignis, too. But there’s still a chance we can get him back, at least. Right?”

He never expected an answer as he put his hand on the book.

“Maybe this is what’ll allow us to break that spell on Ignis. … Hey, do you think he’d fit the Wanderer? I’m pretty sure he’d fit the Wanderer, what with the twin swords and everything...”

He picked the book up again and put it against his forehead. Before he could stop it, tears were rolling down his face, and he felt even more pathetic than he had before while talking to the dingy old thing.

“I want him back… I want you back. This is all so very fucking wrong, and here I sit… wondering which one of my ancestors would grant him their protection if he were here and I were in the Crystal like I should be… The Wanderer…”

For a split moment he felt cold. The coldness was stifling, calming somehow, and the stagnant air carried the scent of Sylleblossoms.

“ _He carries the Sage’s malice,”_ whispered the joint voices of Gentiana and Luna, and Noctis jumped to his feet.

He was still alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> note: the noctis timeline is still slightly behind the ardyn/ignis timeline at this point


	16. the frost and the flowers on this plain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is. very ravus-centric. granted all from noct's pov but. very very ravus-centric.

Noctis had only been told about how the other countries coped with the darkness. Sometimes, he knew, airships were sent to other countries with crates full of meteor shards – because Tenebrae and Accordo both had settlements left over, full of people who could not or simply refused to make the journey to Lucis. Considering how many ships were sunk and how rare functioning airships actually were, it was of no surprise. He had no idea where the Accordans were; one of the city states that made up the country but Noctis had forgotten which. Altissia still lay in ruins after what had transpired there.

Tenebrae’s survivors and the people who did not make the journey were all within the walls of Fenestala Manor.

Ravus had dryly remarked that it weren’t many – most Tenebraens had been drafted into the Niff army if they were of age, and quite a lot had all but fled to Lucis when Insomnia had fallen and Lunafreya had first been reported dead. Those few hundred or so people who were simply too old, too sick or too young to make the journey had been given a place to stay. Then there were of course the loners who still lived outside, fighting for their lives on their own. Those existed everywhere.

No one really knew what became of Niflheim, and none of the Niffs Noctis knew quite had an idea what to do about their country.

“With Emperor Aldercapt dead, what _can_ we do?” Aranea had said as they boarded the airship she would be flying to Tenebrae for Noctis and Ravus. “We’ve had our hard fall coming, even smartasses like Tummelt agree to that now that they’ve been humbled. Who’s to say a helping hand won’t be swatted away by those who remain too proud to accept their sins and the help they need? I say, let ‘em rot. Can’t do more than sniff out the bunkers they’re holed up in, find the frequency they’re on, and offer them a place to stay. Whether they take it or not, up to them.”

That was a job for another day, however, and Noctis shifted on the seat slightly.

He’d been to Tenebrae just once, back when he had been a child recovering from a near death experience. Back when Oracle Sylva had lived, when Lunafreya had been the gentle second best friend he ever had, back when Ravus had been the proud crown prince who impressed the weary King Regis with his intelligence. Noctis remembered that his father had more than once said that if things were different, Ravus would have made a fine king.

He had to agree now. Perhaps the cold distance Ravus kept between himself and others, that carefully built wall, would have never existed if he and his father had simply never gone to Tenebrae. Ravus was calculating and had a presence in a room – a presence that Noctis still lacked despite being the king now. Even now as they sat there on the airship waiting Ravus’ presence was overwhelmingly royal. Ignis had carried a similar air, now that Noctis thought about it. Whenever people had failed to notice their very quiet prince they noticed the advisor and by extension the actual blue blood in the room. People called Ignis his shadow, but Noctis had started to realise that sometimes he had been Ignis’ shadow instead.

“You look nervous,” Ravus eventually sighed when Noctis started tapping his feet against the cold steel floor of the airship.

“I… I guess.”

“Is there something I can do to help soothe your nerves, or is it my presence that makes you nervous?” It wasn’t like Ravus to be so considerate, and Noctis furrowed his brows as the man continued speaking. “Because if it is the latter, I can move to the cockpit instead.”

Noctis noted that the man was carefully dragging his fingers down his prosthetic arm before he closed his eyes. “No, it’s okay. You kinda seem nervous too, though.”

They stared at each other for a while until Ravus’ eyes finally darted away. He did look nervous, now that the king was looking closer. Far from composed and ready for anything, kind of like Ignis in that regard when something obviously bothered him. Noctis leaned forwards a little.

“It can’t be about returning to your birthplace, can it?”

Ravus immediately shook his head. “No, not that.”

Clearly he was debating with himself whether to tell Noctis or not. All those little secrets, and Noctis was frankly getting kind of sick of it. Everyone seemed to have them, from Iris whenever she looked away from him and her smile freezing, to Prompto staring off into the distance with a blank expression, to Ravus now clearly unsure what to say. It was only Noctis who had been completely honest; he had no secrets other than talking to the notebook about Ignis occasionally. Luna would have understood, Luna would have sat beside him with an arm around his shoulders and the gentle reassurance that they would get Ignis back home, that Ignis had not been in control when Cor had died – if Ignis had killed the Marshal at all.

“Those people in Fenestala Manor are what remains of Tenebrae outside of the ones who are in Lestallum. People who…”

Noctis and Ravus both stared at the ground.

Two princes, one country and its people.

Noctis was fairly certain that no matter how much Ravus did, he would always remain the traitor who went into Niflheim’s oh-so-loving arms once they murdered his mother. And Noctis himself was the Chosen, the one who let their beloved Oracle die. The Tenebraens in Lestallum were friendly like the Lucians, but those who remained in the country of their birth?

Suddenly he was rather sure he didn’t want to go with Ravus, but a strange feeling of solidarity urged him off the airship when Aranea landed it.

* * *

The look had changed, but the general layout was the same that it had been when Noctis had been here more than thirteen years ago. Ravus led him through the halls of his childhood home, his steps rather certain for someone whose head hung low as he walked. Noctis remembered stumbling after Luna through these halls when his legs finally started getting a little better and allowed him to walk for short distances. He remembered her pushing his wheelchair through the halls, their laughter ringing through Fenestala Manor louder than it ever did when he decided that it was time to slide around the polished marble floors at the Citadel with Ignis. It had always been Ravus who had looked kind of annoyed when Luna and Noctis were up to their shenanigans, but every time he saw how happy his sister looked the annoyance faded. Noctis had nearly forgotten about how obvious Ravus’ adoration for his younger sister was.

He tried to fight back the memory of surging flame, of Ravus yelling after him and his father, of Luna letting go of King Regis’ hands, her vanishing between the soldiers who reminded him so horribly of the Marilith.

It only took them so long to find people in the brightly lit halls of Fenestala Manor, and Noctis realised that all of these people truly were mostly old people unwilling to leave the country of their birth behind. He also noted a child clinging to his mother, a horrible grey patch on his face. Noctis had gotten used to Loqi and his burn scars, but children with the Scourge were a special kind of awful, even in Lestallum. Most of the time he never ran into people who had fallen sick; most of them even left the city as soon as they started feeling unwell. So many people who weren’t hunters vanished into the darkness never to be seen again. And this boy would be joining them.

He noticed how Ravus’ shoulders tightened when he spoke to the mother of that boy.

They had talked about that during one of their outings, when Noctis had warped about and told Ravus to try hitting him as he did that. Ravus had sat down once he started getting dizzy, and Noctis had stopped to stand watch. Then the man had started talking about how the other day he ran into a woman who was leaving the city because she had the Scourge. How he had almost desperately wished to have Lunafreya’s powers, with his eyes gleaming in the dark as if he were about to start crying. He wasn’t his mother or his sister, he had eventually concluded, and he had always felt so utterly powerless in the grand design of things.

He’d let a spark of light dance across his fingers before closing his hand with a sigh. It was a sick joke, he had said as he got up again, that the gods saw it fit to give him a tiny shred of the power his mother and sister had had when they were alive, but also were keeping him from at least healing early cases of the Scourge.

“It’s unfair,” he had said as he got back up.

“I don’t think the gods are fair to begin with,” Noctis had retorted as they returned to Lestallum, and the rest of that walk was done in utter silence.

At the very least these people didn’t seem to be angry at Ravus – or Noctis for that matter. They just looked tired in the bright light, and some asked how long they were able to remain here. They did not want to leave Fenestala Manor to Daemons, they said, to honour Lady Lunafreya’s sacrifice and the late Queen Sylva’s dedication to this country, to the fate of the world. Not now that Tenebrae was technically free at last just as the Nox Fleuret family had always wished.

Noctis knew that it would be viable to keep Fenestala up and running for a long time. A decade, even. It consumed a lot less electricity than anticipated even with all the hallways brightly lit to ensure that no Daemons ever popped up inside and people who turned were immediately stunned by the light for easy dispatching. Ravus knew that as well when a child barely above his knees asked if they would have to leave this nice home because of the darkness one day. The people around them were surprised by the fact that Ravus got down to his knees in order to look that almost pathetically tiny child in the eyes. He didn’t manage to crack an earnest smile – no one did these days when it came to serious topics – but at least he managed to look reassuring somehow.

“I swear upon my sister’s name, we will keep this place, this… home, safe for as long as possible. And if the moment comes where it is no longer safe, we’ll get you a new home. All of you.”

Home.

It was such a strange word nowadays. Noctis had started to consider Lestallum his home; instead of the impressive sunsets in Insomnia the word conjured up the lit streets of the city, him sitting on a bench and watching the Glaives and Niff soldiers and Accordan privates and Tenebraen volunteers being instructed by Lucian hunters. The only thing that was really missing in this picture was Ignis; he desperately missed his advisor by his side. But otherwise Lestallum was his home now, a place he wanted to protect. Most people of Lestallum agreed to the sentiment, even if Iris often joked about having three homes – Cape Caem was a place they needed to reclaim, somehow, if only to find the royal vessel again; Insomnia waited ominously at the other end of Lucis and with it waited Ardyn.

Ravus and Noctis continued their silent march through the manor, and once they reached a specific part, the people went from accepting to vaguely hostile. Those were mostly the old people now, those who remembered Queen and Oracle Sylva’s rule, how Princess Lunafreya became Lady Lunafreya and then Oracle Lunafreya. The silent suffering of that young woman, and the brother who left to butcher people in the name of the people who had murdered his mother in front of his face. People who knew that Luna had given up everything for Noctis, but he was far from the perfect Chosen who would purge the darkness.

It was all meaningless without Luna there to see it anyway, in their eyes. The one who deserved to live the most had died, and a useless Chosen and a hated Commander remained.

Eventually Ravus stopped. Noctis bumped into him; he had been expecting Ravus to lead him to the defunct throne room where the Trident of the Oracle had been kept. The man was staring out of the window. Without saying anything Ravus started walking again, taking several sharp turns and almost breaking into a hurried jog. Noctis followed, confused, but unable to ask him anything. After all, he felt it once Ravus fumbled to unlock a door. There was something out there, stifling and powerful.

Ravus started running once the door was open, and Noctis slammed it shut to follow him.

It took him a moment to remember what this place was. The last time he had seen it it was in a nonsensical dream of Luna and him as children, her staring at him sadly. Once he had said something he barely remembered the place had washed out, had been replaced with water swallowing up him and Luna, and the comforting blue of the Sylleblossoms giving way to the horrific deep.

Now, a year into darkness, there was barely anything left of the wonderful field of flowers Luna had taken him to when they had been children, the field of flowers she had continued tending to during her captivity. The sad crunch of dead foliage underneath his boots made his heart hurt and he couldn’t even remotely begin to imagine how that had to feel for Ravus. The High Commander indeed slowed down after a while, coming to a halt somewhere in the middle of nowhere. Fenestala Manor’s lights seemed so far away now, and Noctis was fairly certain that they should have been beset by Daemons at least seven times over by now.

But nothing stirred as he looked ahead and saw the High Messenger standing there with her back turned to him and Ravus.

“Gentiana,” Ravus choked out, “have you been here the entire time?”

Noctis remembered the voice of Gentiana just yesterday evening, joined together with Luna’s as they said something about the Sage’s malice in response to him talking about Ignis, and he felt chilled to his very bones. The Messenger did not turn around to face the only survivor of the family she had been with since the beginning of time according to legends.

“The Oracle’s call raises the weapons to the skies. Piercing the deep, they return whence they came once the power diffuses; but little did we know what would be unleashed in the wake of tragedy, of eternal dark.” The woman’s voice was as soothing as it had been back when she had led him through Duscae towards the runestones, but her words were less than comforting. “They give their powers to the few they deem worthy, for the Ring of Light remains missing.”

“My sister had it. She said she would return it to Noctis! Where has it gone!?”

Finally Gentiana turned around, her eyes closed as always but her expression was different this time. Normally she smiled her comforting smile – now it was nothing but cold blankness and Noctis was rather glad that Ravus stood between him and her.

“Swept away in the wake of tragedy, in the cold hands of fear and defiance. It rests, waiting for the King of the Stone to come claim it – though not the way the gods intended him to.”

It was suitably cryptic for a Messenger. Gentiana had always talked like that, at least when Noctis was around, so this wasn’t something he wasn’t used to. Ravus had started shaking, however. It had never really struck Noctis until now, but Luna and Ravus had grown up around this woman. She was to them what Cor had been to him, and the realisation was made worse by the fact that unlike Cor, Gentiana did not die. She did not age. She didn’t get murdered while out in the fields, and her very presence seemed to ward off the evil that were Daemons and the Scourge.

“So we are to bide our time until it pops up!? Gentiana, you _know_ where it is, don’t you?”

She opened her eyes, the blank expression replaced by one of utter sadness. She closed the distance between her and Ravus to put a hand on his cheek; Noctis saw how Ravus flinched. “Even the gods cannot see everywhere, beloved brother of the lady. For we are dead, and the dead cannot see where darkness swallows all.”

Frost was blooming all around them, and the sad blackened stumps and scraps that had once been a wonderful field of flowers were covered in it. Slowly but steadily the frost grew, and Noctis watched in awe as everything crackled under the sheer cold as slowly it grew upwards. The Sylleblossoms were long dead, but now they were reforming; copies made of ice. He also saw frost blooming on Ravus’ cheek from behind as Gentiana’s form slowly melted. The black colour gave way to frosty whites and blues, and before long Gentiana was gone and replaced by a goddess he had only ever seen depicted in murals and the Cosmogony.

“We are as blind in the dark as you are, Blood of the Oracle,” whispered Shiva as she dropped her hand from Ravus’ face. “We were meant to protect the Stone as it harboured the King of Light. Not this. Never this.”

Ravus seemed kind of shocked by the reveal that Gentiana was Shiva. Noctis, too, could only stare in awe as the goddess backed off and floated over to Noctis. There was a respectful distance between them, and Noctis saw his own breath. It was so very cold, and he was suddenly aware of that. But he couldn’t shiver; it felt disrespectful.

“King of the Stone. With a heavy heart did the Lady Oracle once ask for the covenant. It is with an even heavier heart that I comply, with naught to give you but her words – that she loved you just as much as she loved her brother, that she wanted to see you once more.”

Noctis stared at her with wide eyes. He hadn’t expected a goddess to sound so heartbroken as she spoke.

“Luna...”

“It is with empty hands that I stand before you now, offering you naught but a covenant, a covenant that the lady asked to forge years before our meeting here. I ask of you; do you accept?”

Noctis stared at the goddess with tears running down his face. His entire body was going numb from the sheer cold. The ice flowers around him reflected the soft light that seemed to surround Shiva; not the deep blue that the flowers normally were but something crystalline in nature, not unlike the Armiger itself. It was a breathtaking scene, but all Noctis felt was empty.

“I do.”

Shiva leaned forwards, her cold hands suddenly on his cheeks. He saw that the tips of his hair were frosting over as she leaned in to place a gentle kiss on his forehead. A cold kiss that burned through his skin, sent the deathly embrace of winter through his his veins. Then she vanished, like frost in the morning.

All that remained were the ice flowers and the dreadful shivering that started now as he and Ravus stood there.

* * *

There was one room that had been declared off-limits for the people, but they would have never gone in there even with permission.

Back when he had been in Tenebrae he had not often been in here; usually to grab Luna for dinner or to drag her out into the gardens. It didn’t look the same, and the dust settled on most of the furniture only reminded him of the fact that Luna had died. She was dead and had been for over a year, and she would never be coming back.

Part of Noctis expected the Trident of the Oracle to lean against the wall there, waiting because it was Luna’s last gift to him and her brother from the afterlife. Something that she wanted to give them as personally as she could, without the goddess who helped raise her interfering.

The room was empty.

There were no weapons leaning against walls, and the silence in her was as choking as the dust itself was. The people hadn’t had the heart to clean this room.

Ravus sunk to his knees once he reached the middle of it, a choked sound escaping him. Noctis didn’t know what was causing this reaction. He didn’t mean to pry, either. Truth be told, he felt kind of out of place. This man had likely not grieved properly for his dead sister; but he had not exactly told the full story.

Noctis felt like an intruder as Ravus quite audibly fought with his tears.

The only reason he didn’t leave was that the High Commander had asked him to come in here with him and stay. A few minutes Noctis stood around awkwardly, and he came to the almost crushing realisation that if this were his father’s room in Insomnia, he would be reacting the same. That was when he worked up the courage to walk forwards and put a hand on Ravus’ shoulder. The High Commander stopped in that very moment.

“… I suppose I… misjudged.”

“Beg pardon?”

Ravus exhaled very slowly. “I had assumed you would… react the same as… your advisor did, back in Altissia.”

Noctis froze and removed his hand from Ravus’ shoulder. The man definitely had never talked in detail about what had happened there; Noctis always felt like he had skipped parts of it and fast-forwarded to the point where Ardyn and the Niff soldiers appeared to pin Ignis down and Ardyn knocked Ravus out.

“He kept his distance. … Granted, I had just… I had just… suffered a humble defeat at his hands after...”

He couldn’t even begin to imagine Ignis and Ravus fighting. There was no denying that Ignis was strong, stronger than most others. He was fast on his feet and crafty when it came to one-on-one combat; but Ravus hadn’t risen through the military ranks just because he was a royal. Ignis started wavering in the face of brute strength, and brute strength was something that Noctis quickly learned to appreciate about Ravus. He and Gladio were almost evenly matched, with the exception that Ravus was lighter on his feet than Gladio was, but Gladio had the defensive upper hand. Both of those men were people who Ignis struggled against – brute strength and good defences.

The High Commander shook his head and slowly stood back up.

“Apologies.”

“What for? I’d… be in the same position if this were Insomnia and this my father’s room.” Noctis in fact felt like crying just looking at this place too.

Ravus tried to say something, but whatever he said died in his throat when the room shifted. All of a sudden it went dark despite the lights still being on, and any sounds either of them made were drowned out by the absolutely deafening silence.

It felt familiar, and that was what frightened Noctis.

Then a vague form shifted into reality in front of the both of them, and Noctis froze. He’d only heard stories about this, how it would have happened at his coronation like this. Ravus reacted much stronger to a Lucii shifting into being in front of them.

All of a sudden the sad calmness around the man had dissipated, and blank horror had replaced the bitter grief on his face. He had almost immediately put his hand against the prosthetic and stumbled a few steps backwards. Noctis decided to step between him and the Lucii just as Ravus had stood between him and Gentiana earlier – it was kind of silly, considering how much taller Ravus was. But the fear on his face made Noctis wonder what was going through his head right now.

“State your business, king of old,” he whispered into the sudden darkness.

“ _Blood of my blood, blood of the Oracle.”_

Noctis held his breath as a vague shape appeared beside the Lucii; a woman he did not know. She did not look like one of the Lucii either, barely more than a faceless outline against the dark.

“ _Blood of my blood, blood of Lucis.”_

That voice was familiar somehow, but it took him until Ravus breathed out a “mother” to realise that this was Queen Sylva, somehow defying all logic and the finality of death to appear here as barely more than a vague outline next to one of the Lucii. Noctis squinted at the impressive suit of armour, technically he had learned about these and the way they appeared. Ignis had always been better at identifying these statues around Insomnia, eventually he had started pointing them out until Noctis recognised them too. A real Lucii looked rather different than the statues of the Old Wall, and so it took him a minute or so.

“The… Oracle. You’re the Oracle.”

“ _So it is.”_

A man who had claimed the title of Oracle until the actual Oracle’s children were old enough to claim the title. Though not capable of healing he had carried the weapon with him for the rest of his life, and returned it to Tenebrae before his death. Theoretically his weapon was a royal arm – the royal arm that remained missing. A hole in Noctis’ Armiger.

“ _Much like the goddess before, we stand here with words only. Words that once helped shape the future, words that now fall upon deaf ears.”_

Ravus was shaking, and Noctis himself was standing there kind of unsure what to do or how to feel.

Iris and Libertus had probably felt the same when coming face to face with the Lucii who had given them their blessing. Noctis had only heard stories about the Mystic and the Just, but both of them had seemed rather humbled by the encounter.

“ _Ravus… of the Nox Fleuret family,”_ Sylva’s voice sounded static, distant. It was very quiet compared to that of the Oracle beside her. _“You are not an Oracle. Were never meant to heal the masses, never meant to stand where you do. Yet here you are, in this uncertain future. As blood of the Oracle, as only surviving member of this family that has ever sworn its allegiance to the blood of Lucis, I ask of you: will you stand beside the Chosen King, take the place that was left vacant?”_

“I...”

Noctis and Ravus had never been friends. They had their disagreements; Ravus considered Noctis weak and pathetic, Noctis considered him an arrogant brute full of himself. It had been Luna who had connected them, a connection that was severed. Her suffering had been what had made Ravus vicious, he had confessed during one of their magic training sessions. Luna had suffered so much under the covenants, under the destiny that had been chosen for her rather than something she had chosen. His own helplessness as his sister bravely suffered had made Ravus hate Noctis, and he had admitted that he had been rather wrong. Noctis had never known about any of this, and if he had had he would have objected, demanded something to change. That was what Ravus had learned since Altissia, and he apologised.

Some things could not be forgiven, but in that moment, Noctis forgave him.

Now those two were offering him what he had always wanted, way too late. There was no burden to be lifted off Lunafreya’s shoulders – she was dead. The one thing that Ravus always wanted to prevent from happening.

Noctis saw that flash of seething anger that went through Ravus’ body when he realised the same.

But he took a deep breath as he stared at the Lucii and a vague apparition that used the voice of his late mother. A voice Noctis barely remembered, but a voice that clearly still haunted Ravus in his dreams.

“I do.”

The one answer none would have ever expected, least of all Noctis and Ravus themselves.

* * *

He’d started talking to the man after a hunting party had been completely wiped out at the Vesperpool. It was no secret that the Altissian man taking care of the Greenhouse District had fallen in love with one of the hunters who had died during that hunt gone wrong. All of their deaths had shocked Noctis after the vague knowledge that the gods were still with him after Tenebrae. Suddenly he had felt abandoned again and he had avoided those who had received the blessings of the Lucii – namely Iris, Libertus and Ravus; the Just, the Mystic and the Oracle.

The Greenhouse District still soothed his nerves, and the Alto had started talking to him as he took care of the crops in that particular greenhouse Noctis had hidden himself away in.

In a sick sense, they had both lost loved ones to Ardyn – Ignis remained missing, and Alto’s lover would not suddenly rise to their feet again. The man even said something of that effect himself one morning as Noctis helped him take care of a bunch of greens meant for Chocobos. Noctis had asked why he was still taking care of all these plants despite the obvious anguish he was in.

“Much like Lady Lunafreya, they won’t come back. All I can do is carry on, which is what they would want me to do, Your Majesty. That’s why I’m still doing this.”

Noctis nodded and said he’d be helping Alto with most of that.

They got along, surprisingly enough, even though Noctis usually furrowed his brows when it came to actually harvesting vegetables. Alto was a calm, friendly man, and after a week the old Accordan optimism started breaking through his grief again. He even mentioned that sometimes he had gone to the Maagho just to chat with its proprietor and it left Noctis wondering if those Accordans who were still in the country there were okay. He said that he was thinking about sending something to them when Alto asked about why his expression was so grim, and the Altissian had laughed.

“Oh, that’d be fantastic.”

Aranea’s plan of contacting the bunkers had borne fruit. Ravus and she had almost feverishly thrown themselves into that together with Loqi Tummelt.

It all wound up in tragedy, as a bunch of people who had run out of provisions in their bunker had left with their airship crashed in the countryside. By the time the hunters and Glaives dispatched there had arrived, every single one of them had been torn apart by Daemons. People were starting to call the Vesperpool a haunted region because so many deaths had occurred so shortly after one another there.

“Almost as if someone waited for the Niffs to crash in that exact spot,” Alto had said with a shudder when Noctis wound up in the greenhouse sleep-deprived and guilty. He’d spent more than 24 hours awake together with Ravus, Aranea and Loqi, discussing how they could take care of the other Niffs that hadn’t immediately and angrily declined any help from them, let alone from Lucis. He didn’t want to think about it, but the ex-soldier merely put a hand on his shoulder.

“Your Majesty, go to bed. You’re not helping anyone if you can’t focus. Keep your head high; Lord Scientia and Lady Lunafreya would want you to.”

Noctis bid him a good night.

The next morning they found the Altissian dead in one of the greenhouses. Noctis nearly had a hysteric breakdown as Gladio dragged him away from that gruesome scene; all the blood on all those wonderfully tended to plants.

Just after that the rumours about Ignis having killed Cor and perhaps even Alto started to spread, and he buried himself in his bed again.

Ignis wouldn’t, cried Rhea Scientia, a woman completely broken by the death of her husband and brother and the disappearance of her son. She vanished a few days later, the woman who had been taking care of her completely panicked and apologising profusely.

Ignis absolutely wouldn’t, Noctis had to agree as Gladio gave a few instructions to a search and rescue party.

And even if it were Ignis, he was still being controlled by Ardyn. It was all Ardyn’s fault. Everything was Ardyn’s fault.

Noctis felt like the gods had abandoned him all over again; their failed Chosen who had lost the Ring of the Lucii.

If only he could get Ignis back.


	17. BROTHER

Ardyn Izunia was fuming.

No, fuming was likely putting it too lightly. He was filled with the blind hot rage that had rained from the skies during the Astral War, the fire that had brought a planet-spanning empire to its knees and had let sickness wash away those who survived. He was the Scourge incarnate at this point, but right now he truly felt like the centre of hot, all-consuming sickness that warped the mind and the body alike. Were he up to his usual overly dramatic antics when that out of his mind mad, he was fairly certain he would have had fire spark up under his feet every time he took a step, to mirror how people skilled with ice magic generally walked over water. He did no such thing. He was likely too angry to control it; and a flash fire that consumed the ruins of Insomnia was the last thing he needed right now anyway.

Still, he was furious and seething, his limp all but a minor inconvenience as me marched down the streets of Insomnia with no particular goal in mind.

Ignis Scientia had the correct idea and dodged out of his sight before Ardyn truly registered the movement, but he had more important things to do. He could always kick a subordinate around later, if what he was going to do did not quell his anger.

He stopped in front of the statue of the Mystic, the infernal stone golem they built in the likeliness of his _dear_ and long dead brother. For a moment he considered letting the anger go and direct it into something more productive, but Ardyn instead chose to crack a grin at this lifeless rock. A soulless hunk of stone.

“You just don’t know when to _quit,_ do you, Somnus?”

At some point, after he had killed the Altissian soldier because he seemed to ease Noctis’ suffering, he felt this strange throb between his shoulder blades. An injury that he had long since forgotten, one that now hurt as peculiarly as the arm Lunafreya had used her magic on with the promise of _peace._ It had never been peace that he wanted; just complete death with not even memories left of him sounded just as appealing as at least getting remembered by history did. But right now his focus was on the statue of the one person he never got to take revenge on, because this revenge would be tied to slowly but steadily tearing Noctis apart if he decided that he wanted to continue living for all eternity.

The sting on his back nearly knocked the air out of his lung, and Ardyn wheezed as he once more leaned against the statue’s leg. This time there was nothing of the melancholy that Ignis had noted last time; Ardyn was quivering with rage as he did that. He let out a laugh, a laugh so ominous that it would have made people with any sort of self-preservation run away.

“Just cough up your oh-so-precious ring and guide it back to Noctis if you are so _desperate_ to see this prophecy through.” Ardyn peeled himself off the statue and stared up with a smile. “There’s no need to involve some unfortunate fools who could have lived through this.”

Ardyn had considered simply walking away for now. Leave the statue be and take his anger out on something or someone else, but within a split second he changed his mind.

With a howl a weapon he only used in fights he took serious materialised in his hands. Something that had given him the moniker ‘reaper’ for a while in history. This scythe was slow and unwieldy, powerful enough to cleave mountains in twain if he wanted to but very much something that did not entirely fit how he normally approached battle. Much like most other things it was an illusion made manifest, magic that crackled as it became a solid weight in his hands. It shimmered in the darkness, soft red, almost pink, and looked like any royal weapon did except _wrong_ somehow. Fragile-looking and breathtakingly beautiful, yet strong enough to best even the divine as it drained its wielders stamina, then their lifeblood, and ultimately their very life.

This weapon did no such thing; it was not a royal arm. It was simply a creation that shimmered with its unearthly glow, the power of the Scourge coming off it in hot waves if those few people who had lived long enough to comment on it were to be believed.

Ardyn swung it into the statue’s leg. It was already brittle, worn down from fighting Besithia’s hellish creations called Diamond Weapon. It crumbled as the leg gave in, and Ardyn merely picked up the momentum. In a mad frenzy he destroyed that haunted statue that looked just like his brother head but more impressive, intimidating… taller.

“I do so _sincerely_ hope you know what you and your descendants have done! Ruined a life, you have! Not mine, mind, but whatever unfortunate fool has received your blessing will surely come to regret it. _Deeply_ so.”

He finished his job with a blast of dark energy, enough of it that it knocked him backwards a few steps and shattered his weapon. Brilliant shards of crystal red and chunks of torn rock and concrete, the dust that settled now vile and aggravating to a normal person’s lungs. Hundreds of years of antiquity, a statue more valuable than most things outside of the Citadel’s treasures, the Old Wall – nothing remained but deformed chunks of what once was the statue of the Mystic.

“Oh, Somnus dearest,” Ardyn dismissed the shattered glass and kicked a piece of debris, “you’ve made a _grave_ mistake. If only you’d stayed in yours, then none of this would have happened.”

He clicked his tongue angrily as the pain flared up again.

Ardyn Izunia was still fuming.

* * *

Ignis was agile, but not agile enough. As soon as he landed after that elaborate jump-dodge, Ardyn reached forward and grabbed him by the back of his neck. He felt the jerk as Ignis realised his mistake.

“Elaborate dodging will not help you score in a battle to the death.”

The advisor said nothing and instead freed himself. He whipped around and swung the Trident of the Oracle, bringing its tip to a perfect halt just centimetres away from Ardyn’s throat.

“Neither will commenting on my form,” he said slowly.

“Goodness, Ignis. Were this a real fight your head would have rolled before you ever had the chance to,” Ardyn slowly put a hand on the weapon’s head to shove it away with a smile, “do this.”

Knowledge was power, but Ignis did not do as Ardyn expected him to. He simply put the trident away, its head almost scraping the floor when Ignis stopped moving with a scowl on his face. Even knowing that Ardyn would simply return after a while did not drive the advisor to needless violence. A virtue, perhaps, but Ardyn knew that he had been trained to not kill unless his prince’s life was in danger or he was ordered to by aforementioned prince.

“Hypothetical rolling heads or not, if we assume that my hypothetical killer is a little bit sloppy in their execution, I might still be able to take them down with me before my body goes into shock.”

Ardyn merely snorted and shrugged.

He was still trying to figure out where in that messy net of blessings his brother’s rested, to no avail thus far. The only one he had been able to make out clearly had been the Just, burning brightly alongside Iris Amicitia. She was one of the few people he would have never assumed to be such a nuisance in the long run; her father and her brother had all but ensured that she was inexperienced in battle when it really mattered, but a year into darkness she had proved herself thrice over. Ignis’ little mishap with the Red Giant had all but cemented her role as important frontline fighter – it was kind of ironic, since she was only sixteen years old at this point, going on seventeen. She wasn’t even done growing yet.

The other blessings had popped up after he had had his way with the statue. Slowly but steadily, like weeds they sprung up. Ardyn had tried finding the person who carried his brother’s blessing with them, only to encounter just about any other under the sun. He noted the surge of power across the countryside, and all of a sudden Lestallum seemed a lot safer than it had ever before.

Ardyn had gone out of his way to figure out how to stem that flood of power, but had not yet come up with a solution. The bad thing about working against the gods was that they were able to do things like these, and it left him still angrier than he had been in the last one thousand years or so.

“Well then. You’ve died several times this session alone. General sloppiness might be attributed to exhaustion, so see that you rest up after this.” After all, Ardyn might send him to hunt down one of the sigil-bearers for fun another day. “But for now, toss your weapons aside. Or, well, the spear. You won’t need it for this.”

Ignis definitely hesitated. The young man shot Ardyn a glare from underneath his bangs – he looked wild rather than proper these days. The hair had grown almost too long for his face, he had stopped wearing gloves to protect his hands. It seemed like a miracle that he still found the time to shave despite the overall ragged look he had now. Ignis brushed his hair out of his face with a huff before tossing the Trident of the Oracle aside.

“The daggers are staying.”

He wouldn’t be quick enough to draw them anyway if Ardyn decided to summon a barrage of blades to send into Ignis’ general direction. Killing him was a waste for now, which was just about the only reason why Ardyn didn’t simply immediately tear him to shreds. He was angry enough to _excuse_ a wasteful death.

But not today. “Fine then. Perhaps you’ll need them to aim better after all.”

Ignis’ glare was still the same after a year. There was something defiant still in those eyes, and Ardyn was almost giddily awaiting the day that last defiance completely broke. Perhaps it would never come – which would be interesting in its own way. Contracting the Scourge and giving up was what accelerated the process; people with a strong will however could go _years_ without turning into a Daemon. Those people were generally the strongest, the most terrifying Daemons to begin with, and Ardyn was quite interested in seeing how Ignis would process once all hope was lost. For now, he still had hope. Whatever the reason for his staying truly was, he still clung to the belief that one day he could return home, that much was obvious.

“Now then, Ignis, show me whether you can control this gift you fought so hard for or not.”

There was a moment of silence that Ignis spent parsing Ardyn’s words. Then, a split moment later, Ardyn noted with a small amount of satisfaction, Ignis conjured up a fireball almost effortlessly.

It was a banally simple spell – but Ignis was not someone who wove elaborate spell patterns into the air around him. Individuality with magic had often made Ardyn wonder why there was no naturally occurring magic any longer; back when he had been healer he and his brother had been considered an exception from a very simple rule.

No person was born able to use magic, no matter how much latent talent they had for it when the gods saw it fit to let them control it.

Ardyn, Somnus, and that Oracle whose name he had forgotten had all been born with their powers, though the Oracle’s was different back then. Only when the gods had realised their mistake and branded Ardyn a Daemon and after Somnus had banished him did the Nox Fleuret bloodline gain the ability to heal. Before that they had been similar to Messengers, able to see the future and show others their visions. Mortal Messengers, a link between mortals and those who communed with gods. With the Messenger’s perpetual absence eventually the Oracles of Tenebrae became the only connection between men and gods.

He stepped out of the way when Ignis tossed the fireball – only for Ignis to shoot him a smile and jerk his hand up a little. Ardyn realised in that exact moment what Ignis had managed, and but a split second later he felt fire splash across his back. Wisps of green flame danced in his field of vision, and Ardyn doused the flames with a click of his tongue.

“Not bad. How on good earth did you figure that one out?”

Ignis wiped sweat off his brow – a clear sign that using magic this way was draining. It wasn’t surprising; Daemonic magic was harder to control than the Crystal’s was, and jerking a fireball that had been fired off around like a boomerang was not something that occurred naturally.

“Watched the… salpinx? The ones that generally bounce about over at the Grand Star Crossing in the Eastern Hightown. I realised after a while that their appendages that they toss around like boomerangs seemed to somehow be magically controlled, so I decided to give it a try.”

“Not bad, not bad. Anything else?”

Ignis frowned as he stared at Ardyn now, the self-satisfaction he had as he told the man how he had managed that vanished within the blink of an eye. Ardyn knew for a fact that Ignis used magical pressure to control Daemons, and due to his status as simple human he expended vast amounts of energy while in the field.

As it quickly turned out, Ignis was very reliant on his weapons for magic. Ardyn dodged a dagger wrapped in flames a moment later, the fire lashing out as him even as it missed. It singed his hair; a moment later he was hit by a shower of green sparks that seemingly rained from the skies. Ironically enough his namesake seemed to be what Ignis controlled the best, and Ardyn watched the embers on the ground around him. Every single one of these could hiss upwards – Ardyn was trapped.

“A rather harrowing focus on fire. What will you do when someone controls ice, or wind?”

The pause that now settled between the two of them was unnatural even for Ignis’ extended silences. Ardyn was rather certain that if the man still wore his glasses, he would be adjusting them right now. “The only beings that can use blasts of wind as magical means of offence are Daemons, Your Majesty.”

Suddenly he saw Somnus standing before him again, that way too large sword in his hands, barely going up to Ardyn’s ribs. The way the boy sent his sword flying with what felt like gusts of wind, the way that gust eventually turned into a maelstrom when Somnus was older. Not powerful like Ardyn’s illusions, but they worked well together. For a moment he considered reaching out despite knowing full well this was his own mind, laced with anger, playing tricks on him. His brother wasn’t here, there was no gust building up around them. Ignis had stated a fact, not deliberately said something laced with irony to bitter that Ardyn would have loved to laugh.

He took a step backwards.

“Of course.”

Of course. Of course. Of course. He felt like the knife in Ignis’ hand had been driven into his back all over again, the strange ghastly apparition of his younger brother with his sword drawn and the sensation of the wind rising all around him.

Ardyn declared the session over and fled the city. He needed to find whoever had the Mystic by their side before he went mad from anger.

* * *

The only one of the Six who _graced_ him with her presence often enough for him to recognise her magic long before she appeared was Shiva. She and Ifrit were a constant mirror of opposites; when Ifrit had loved humans she had hated them. Now that she loved them he hated them for what they had done. Fire and ice did not mix, either the fire melted the ice or enough ice melted to quell the flames entirely.

She appeared as silently as she had stood in the fields in Tenebrae, just at around the same time as Ardyn felt the spark of no less than three blessings nearby – the Clever, the Warrior and the Conqueror.

“Come again to deliver cryptic messages and warnings, or do you have anything of substance to say this time, goddess?”

“ _That which you seek to do is below one of your station.”_

“Ah, so we’re speaking in the language of the divine today? _Well, no can do. I’ll do whatever I damn well please to do, Shiva. And speak not of stations – you and I both know that exile eliminates any standing and stations.”_

She stood beside him, frost blooming all around her. It was rare for her to appear in this form, considering that she generally preferred appearing as the High Messenger Gentiana. Ardyn knew that she had given Noctis her blessing by now – much like the powers of the kings of old, the blessing of the gods stood out like a sore thumb. Four powers flickering in and out of his senses, all focused on the same point. The Chosen King, the one who would banish the darkness if the prophecies were to be believed. With the power of ice went the roar of the deep, the thunder of the high skies and a power strong as the very earth itself before the blight spread upon it.

By the time the tips of his hair started frosting over, Ardyn sighed and pat down his coat. “Truly now, what is your purpose here? You’ve a Chosen to watch, and I have… business.”

“ _And I repeat – what you seek to do is abominable and below your station.”_

He cracked a grin at her as the power of the Clever flared up ahead, in conjunction with the sudden increase of bullets being shot. “Oh? As abominable as declaring your own flesh and blood a monster is? Worse? Do enlighten me; you know I thirst for knowledge since nothing else gives me pleasure these days.”

It wasn’t even a lie. For the longest time Ardyn had accumulated what was an impressive array of skills. Machinery, language, mathematics, geology. He had forwarded technology and development during his life – and held it back when it was to his advantage. That was how Niflheim had managed to weaponise ancient Sol creations faster than any other country, how they managed to disable some of the more troublesome magic seals and defence mechanisms. He had figured out the frequency at which a weapon intended to slay the gods rested, had figured out that it were said gods that had buried this weapon until it sprang to life just at around the same time as Noctis had been chosen as King of Light.

He knew more about the mortal realm than the gods did at any rate, and he had used that to his advantage when the goddess of ice had sprung to life to deliver vengeance upon the Niffs that had murdered the Oracle of the family she had sworn to protect. She had paid dearly for that mistake, and Ardyn had laughed about it ever since. It was so foolish to love mortals.

“I take your silence as confirmation that you consider it worse than what my brother did to me. Well, I hereby acknowledge your concerns, and my answer will remain the same as it has ever been: I don’t care. Not any more. Not after what you did.”

He had been looking into the direction of the battle, and nearly jumped out of his skin when he felt a hand cold as ice on his cheek. He did not feel it for particularly long – before more than a small noise of protest escaped him the cold overtook him.

Ardyn woke up again several minutes later, the ice still scattered from where the goddess had shattered him. At least this time he simply reformed a few feet away from where he had died instead of having to recover from a collapsed lung like the last time he had gotten himself impaled.

He cursed – the energies of the sigil-bearers had vanished; whoever the Clever, the Warrior and the Conqueror had chosen had gotten away before he had gotten to catch a glimpse of them. That had likely been Shiva’s purpose in the first place.

He stomped his foot on a piece of ice. It crunched underneath his boot as he ground his teeth together with an inhuman growl.

He _really_ needed to find the idiot who ran around with Somnus’ protection.

* * *

Even through the haze of pain, Ignis had somehow managed to kick him away.

“S… stop,” he coughed, his eyes glazed over, “no more… no more of… this...”

Ardyn crossed his arms. “Then beg for it.”

Ignis hacked, blood splattering on the ground as he almost uselessly lay there. “Y-Your… Majesty, please.”

Overall it had been an improvement in how long Ignis managed to keep himself on his feet, though he passed out moments later. All those broken bones were easy enough to heal, though the fact that Ignis had coughed blood meant that Ardyn had gone a little overboard. A broken rib piercing a lung – that would take a while to fix.

* * *

The woman with the Rogue’s blessing died kicking and screaming, hissing and screeching. She had put up a commendable fight, and Ardyn had to admit he had quite enjoyed this battle. Alas, like most mortals, they were so easily broken. By the time her arm went flying she had already lost, and Ardyn hummed as he kicked her body aside to pick up this trinket she had attached to the bracelet she wore. Its design gave it away as something more powerful than a mere silver charm attached to a gaudy fashion statement, and the moment he dragged his fingers across he felt the familiar blast of energy that was associated with a power given by a king or queen of Lucis – or a member of the Lucii.

The Rogue could only silently scream as the corpse of the woman she had chosen to support was dragged off into the dark by Daemons.

The man with the Fierce’s blessing even managed to take a chunk of Ardyn with him. Sadly a half-collapsed skull did not stop Ardyn and merely brought out his true face; black blood dribbling down on that horrified man’s face as Ardyn quite literally choked the life out of him. Once the spasms stopped Ardyn allowed himself to fall backwards and let his body regenerate – Shiva’s look before the gate was nothing short of appalled as he turned around with a casual wave of the hand.

This guy at least had had the decency to attach his sigil, the pact between him and the spirit of a king long departed, to his weapon. Ardyn yanked it off, tossed the weapon away, and decided to drag the corpse back to Lestallum. He tossed it into the main street and fled the area before anyone saw him. By the time they sent people to search for whoever had killed that Glaive, Ardyn had finished warping from landmark to landmark and landed in front of Ignis.

The advisor let out a scream of surprise when the blood-drenched Ardyn appeared in front of him.

* * *

A strange aura seemed to emanate from Ignis these days.

Ardyn decided not to investigate, not even as Ignis collapsed to his knees screaming, clutching his head, and begging some unseen character for forgiveness.

* * *

He had a hard time remembering who this was supposed to be. Daggers drawn, he somehow reminded Ardyn of Ignis, but there were worlds between the advisor and this member of the Crownsguard.

Ardyn merely let out a long sigh. “Really now, Somnus?”

He felt like he should know that face from somewhere, but he was only drawing at a blank. Perhaps he was mixing up Galahdian nuisances – the only one that had really been memorable had been Nyx Ulric. Perhaps that man had something to do with the late _hero?_ Ardyn certainly didn’t know any longer.

Not that he even particularly cared to begin with. He had found the man he had been looking for, the one whose magical powers brimmed with the Mystic’s support. That infuriating speck of mortal trash that had somehow impressed his even trashier younger brother’s spirit enough that the long-dead joined together with the living.

Alone.

Or rather, separated from the other Glaives he generally went with. A group meant for terminating large groups of smaller Daemons, and Ardyn realised how exactly they had managed it so efficiently when he felt gravity pull him in.

Unfortunately for Libertus Ostium, Ardyn was not here to play. This was a minor inconvenience at best, though the man took the opportunity to try finding his companions again. The limp was very obvious, and Ardyn vaguely remembered some idiots who had managed to draw half of the Kingsglaive and a large amount of refugees in with false promises mentioning that a Glaive had joined their efforts. Some sort of warrior with a limp. Someone who had been frustrated with the peace treaty enough to betray king and country.

Was that truly the same person?

He wondered that for a split second as he made blades manifest around him, sent them flying after the man. The only reason Ardyn was here was because of the protector who had chosen him, the pull of gravity stopping as suddenly as it had begun. The silence was deafening as Ardyn removed that almost hilariously tiny token that had sealed this man’s fate. The pain that flared up on his back nearly knocked him over.

“You’ve got no one to blame for that but yourself; it was a monster this story needed so a monster I became, brother mine. Stop throwing a tantrum.”

He had spent a good amount of time trying to figure out what to do with those tokens. The Rogue and the Fierce did not willingly give him their powers. His investigations had eventually led him to discover that he could force them to submit, through hours upon hours of subjecting these tokens to horrid, most vile magic tricks.

The Mystic’s Sigil glinted in the dark as Ardyn Izunia left the premise ready to stage a play in Insomnia.

* * *

“Oh, Ignis!”

The advisor turned around slowly. There were tears running down his face, but his expression froze in cold horror when he heard the drag and screech of rock and metal against concrete. Ardyn had to admit this was the most fun he’d had in ages, slowly but steadily piecing the statue of his brother back together notwithstanding.

“ _You’re vile.”_

Ardyn clicked his tongue and pat the statue on the head before jumping off its shoulder. “Now, now, Somnus. Don’t be rude when I’m trying to introduce you to someone.”

“H-How on...”

Ignis Scientia had grown up under the Wall. A magical shield that barred everyone from entry, in a city cut off from the outside. The Royal Capital of Insomnia, the beloved crown city, had effectively become its own country while the Wall had been up. In antiquity, before the kings and queens of Lucis learned how to harness the Crystal’s power through conduits, enchanted statues had kept the city safe from harm. The Old Wall that had ever lain lifeless, barely more than the monuments they had raised in honour of the long dead royals that were scattered throughout the city. Wonderful to look at, beautifully crafted.

The Mystic was now crumbling, smaller in size than it had been before. Deep gashes ran through the statue where magic held it together; magic that was wispy and violet, magic that pulsed warm and unfamiliar instead of the crystal cold magic of the line of Lucis. Ardyn saw the horror on Ignis’ face and revelled in it as he bowed.

“Now then, may in introduce? Ignis Scientia, supposed advisor to the King of Light, crafty little nuisance, betrayer of blood royal. Somnus Lucis Caelum, the Mystic of antiquity, the Founder King, by beloved little backstabber of a brother. Both of you actually share a title – Replacement King. That is why I assumed you two would be _thrilled_ to meet one another.”

Ardyn let out a long laugh as the statue moved slightly and Ignis staggered backwards. The front of the Citadel was a wonderfully wide area, and Ardyn was already planning on how to use it for the day Noctis marched into this city. But for now, it would be a suitable battleground for a fight between replacement kings.

“ _You can’t… make me...”_

“Oh, I can, and I will. That’s the only reason I woke you rather than sending you back to sleep where you can but silently rage against who holds you, brother dearest.”

Ardyn shot the statue a grin before waving his hand at Ignis.

“Your orders are to dispatch this crumbly bastard. Fail, and he tears you apart. Disappoint me, and I’ll be the one doing the tearing. Are we clear?”

Ignis’ eyes were fixated on the statue, the horror suddenly replaced by fear. Then determination, that determination that refused to die.

The advisor bowed.

“As you wish.”


	18. You're getting kind of sick of these jokes, aren't you?

Going into the forbidden parts of a royal library had its thrills, Ignis had to admit.

He and Noctis had broken many rules, but never a law. Technically it was not illegal to whisk the prince out of his quarters and take him to a fast food store, Ignis always argued. It technically still were the Citadel grounds, him and Noctis almost drowning trying to catch one of the colourful fish that lived in the decorative pools notwithstanding. He was right, of course. It were never his ideas but it were his ways in and out of the Citadel that eventually made the Crownsguard dread alarms with certain codewords that meant that Ignis Scientia was involved with whatever was going on. Clarus Amicitia had even joked about Ignis being a waste of a potential Kingsglaive; Titus Drautos had only glared at the teenager sitting perfectly straight at a desk with a mountain of work that the sleeping prince had not done quite yet.

But the royal libraries had parts only meant for the current ruler. It was against the law to even pick the lock, not that anyone would have ever tried it after the gruesome reports of people in the past having been executed for their trespassing. Noctis had once voiced interest in going into one of these, and Ignis had immediately shot down that notion. There were things that were not worth losing your head over, he had said and shooed Noctis out of the very room he was now standing in.

The door went down surprisingly easy – not that Ignis wasn’t capable of picking a lock. But half the library’s ceiling had come down, destroyed some of the oldest books in Insomnia; those that had not been buried by rubble had long since been soaked with rainwater and bleached in the sun for as long as it still shone. Ignis had kicked the door down and gone through the surprisingly small room in a feverish frenzy.

Ardyn wasn’t in the city. Which meant Ignis was free to walk around with nothing but his own dagger by his side for once. There was no way the man would reappear to get the jump on him as long as he remained in the Citadel; the Citadel’s destruction was to be preserved as a welcoming gift for Noctis once he gained the power of the True King.

Besides, after that last beatdown, Ignis had to admit he would rather not see Ardyn any time soon. The man had vanished without a trace and he normally stayed away for some days whenever something like this happened.

He put his hand against the back of a book. The handwritten title was surprisingly hard to read despite the fact that Ignis knew the letters.

Before long he found himself sitting on the floor surrounded by books that only the ruler of Lucis had access to. Knowledge that wasn’t supposed to ever leave these rooms, and every trip report into the Lucian countryside that he read made his morbid fascination intensify. Theories on magic, theories on warfare, agricultural reports that showed that over the last thousand years something had near violently shifted in the ecosystem of Lucis and likely the other countries of Eos as well. Faded copies of the Cosmogony with illustrations and warnings to future kings and queens about the Accursed, accounts of history not exactly adding up but there being no way to dispute what was accepted as irrefutable truth.

Ignis felt like a thief collecting knowledge he was not supposed to have, and soon enough when he skimmed a book that told of divinity and the Oracle’s connection to the bloodline of Lucis, the old and familiar static buzzing filled his ears.

Except this time Ignis had been prepared for it. The lines he had skimmed had filled him with a horrible dread that he was not able to quite put a finger on, like the dissonant voice that spoke to him in Zegnautus Keep that had since dissolved into random gibberish and broken sentence that made no sense.

That noise started up this time as well, half-choked-out words and strings of letters that made no sense whatsoever. The voice had corroded over time, a horrible scratching sound on top of the static screech. It made his head throb and his eyes water, but he sat there with the book on his lap as he waited for a pause that always came before the voice got louder unless he managed to block that voice out.

He licked his chapped lips as he waited for his moment.

It came like a calm before the storm as usual, but Ignis merely closed his eyes, focused on the rain-beaten Altar of the Tidemother back in Altissia, on the silent steel halls of Zegnautus Keep.

“It was you all along, wasn’t it? Lady Lunafreya.”

The static immediately dissolved. The silence was like cold water on a hot day, relieving but also so very terrifyingly unreal in a sense that Ignis opened his eyes. There was still darkness other than the light he had brought to read, the books were still where he had left them.

“It was you who let me glimpse into the future in Altissia, and who recounted what you knew of history in Gralea. For the Oracle’s duty does not end with her death, and the Chosen King’s trusted Oracle would never be afforded the chance to pass on until history went its rightful course, until she and the King of Light would reunite in the afterlife.”

The fact that he felt a breeze go through the room was a telltale sign of something not human being around. The winds had died with the final sunset after all. Only Daemons used wind-attributed magic to cause dizziness and confusion in their targets. The almost choking smell of Sylleblossoms left a bitter taste in his mouth.

“ _To stray off the beaten path is not what we mortals should have done.”_ The voice sounded clear now, wonderfully fluent after a year of corrupting more and more. Though still layered by static and muffled by a heavy curtain that was likely the border between life and death, Ignis now recognised her voice. Unlike the day she had died she sounded resigned now. _“You can still return history to its rightful course. It is not too late yet, Ignis.”_

He narrowed his eyes. “I won’t. I won’t let Noctis sacrifice his life to save ours. Even if every single city burns, even if I have to cast myself into that hellfire. Just as you did to ensure that history went the right way, I will make certain that it _doesn’t.”_

He removed the Ring of the Lucii from his pockets. It was a horrible little thing but it looked so unassuming. As long as he kept that from Noctis he could figure out a way to deal with Ardyn and bring back the light without having a royal sacrifice sit upon the empty throne.

“ _Your anger… it is not misplaced. But even through the veil of your determination I can see that you are… scared. You’re scared.”_

“No shit!” He shook his head. “I mean, of course. Why wouldn’t I be.”

“ _To lose one’s centre of the world is also what makes us mortal.”_

“That doesn’t mean the gods have to sacrifice you upon an altar and Noctis on his throne just to wipe out their own damn mistake!” He slammed his left hand on the book in his lap. “Your brother and I were too late to save you. But I can still save Noctis. Even if it means making out with the devil.”

The voice did not answer. Lady Lunafreya remained silent and Ignis sat there, the weight of the laws he had broken less intense than the knowledge that he would lose Noctis if he didn’t come up with something soon.

* * *

“ _Correct the course of history.”_

“Don’t you have anything else to say?”

“ _It’s not too late yet.”_

“You sound like a broken record.”

Two days, and Ignis was going insane. Well, more insane than he already was, the rational part of his brain suggested, but he choked that thought down and drowned Lunafreya’s voice out. All she ever did was plead him to correct the course of history, return the ring to Noctis and see it through with pride rather than resentment.

At some point he had broken a vase in the Citadel when she had asked that again. Had yelled back at her that Noctis meant more to him than the entire world and if he saw this through he would wind up killing himself out of guilt, that there was nothing to be proud of if he led someone as innocent and wonderful as Noctis to his death while knowing about that outcome. She had fallen silent after that and Ignis had sat down among the broken pieces of the vase and sobbed for an hour straight.

This wasn’t helping him at all.

He had never resented her to begin with. He had known all along that eventually something would happen that would drive him and Noctis apart, as it always happened during times of strife. King Regis had had the luck of being politically engaged to his childhood friend; Prince Noctis would likely have to marry someone of power who was somehow related to the empire once Niflheim either subjugated Lucis or offered terms of peace. There were plenty of minor nobles in Niflheim, but none were as outstandingly famous and revered as Lunafreya of Tenebrae.

Ignis had never hated her.

He hated her right now, her and her endless repetition, her countless pleas to lead Noctis to his own death.

“You knew!” He had no idea how or when he wound up in the room before the throne room. “You knew. Yet no one ever told Noctis. Everyone knew except for those who would have told him--”

“ _It is what King Regis wished for.”_

He leaned against the door, unsure whether to open it and to yell his grief at Lunafreya and the vacant Lucian throne. He was fairly certain she knew what he was thinking, considering the buzzing static had always picked up when he went too far into old history. Something or someone was helping Lunafreya torment him with split visions, her gentle voice distorted and haunting, echoing in his skull. He had fought these fits for a year by now, and finally he started to realise things about them.

She fell surprisingly quiet when he focused on the vision of the Crystal and the distant voice of the Draconian that he had heard at the Altar of the Tidemother thanks to her visions.

Ignis peeled himself off the door and marched away from the throne room. Perhaps another day.

* * *

By the time he knew Ardyn was back in the city, he had delved into a full-blown argument with the voice inside his head. He had gone below ground, marched down a dark hallway that he knew led to a parking lot for employees – Ignis himself had parked there countless times. His voice echoed in the dark hallway as he argued with her, his own voice loud but still rather collected, all things considered. It was Lunafreya who started sounding increasingly agitated and uncomfortable as he marched onwards.

“ _I would have told him had I lived!”_

“That would’ve been so very woefully too late, fair lady Oracle!”

“ _It’s not like I had a choice!”_

She had had. She sounded aware of that and it made him stomp once or twice as he walked down the hall. This lot looked surprisingly empty and untouched by the carnage outside. He recognised a few cars and realised that most of the owners had likely died the night Insomnia fell. Members of the Crownsguard who had not been assigned to evacuation details pre-emptively. Members of the council; his own uncle. Ignis paused for a moment and felt the hesitation even from Lunafreya’s side. Something about this place felt haunted to her, though likely differently than to Ignis.

“ _Don’t continue onwards.”_

He huffed with an offended shrug. “Don’t you think haunting your brother would be much better for all of the people included here?”

“ _His destiny is… set. Depending on whether you return history to its true course or not.”_

Ignis went for a door that led back into the Citadel into an underground part that was barely used. There was a large ballroom there that had not been used in ages, and Ignis was planning on taking the elevator back up if that still worked – if it didn’t he could always turn around and use the stairs as he normally did in here. But Ardyn likely accidentally restored other parts in the network in the Citadel when he fixed that solitary elevator, and Ignis was going to see if that one in particular still worked.

“ _Ignis...”_ Her voice was very quiet now. It shook, actually, even through the static that normally accompanied her when she spoke. _“Your fury is not misplaced. Your actions are wrong but you are not wrong to hate me. But… this place. Please, spare yourself this,”_ she took a small breath, one that sounded a suspicious lot like someone holding back tears, _“grief.”_

He pushed open the door to the room. If only it had been as perfectly unassuming as it normally was.

He heard Lunafreya gag in the back of his head, and all of a sudden the noise was gone. The static was gone. It felt like she had just left him, vanished completely behind the silent veil of death, or gone to haunt her brother like he had suggested. For a moment all he head was the blissful silence of being alone in his head.

He vaguely remembered this room. Not because it had ever been fun – that one time when he was younger and taught Noctis how to dance so the prince wouldn’t embarrass himself at the next ball notwithstanding – but rather because he had seen it during one of the worst days in his life. It had been in countless newspapers, under headlines, each one trying to be more dramatic than the next. Whoever had found the remains of what had happened in here had not made a point in cleaning it up properly. The body was gone, yes, but Ignis still gagged just as Lunafreya had had mere moments ago once he saw the brown stain that had once been a puddle of blood.

This was the room King Regis had died in.

The second he realised that, the second his anger was knocked out of his system and replaced with cold shock, something else took Lunafreya’s place. Cold, crystal-clear.

Ignis stumbled forwards a few steps to stare at the place the king had died. The more steps he took, the more he felt like something was gaining traction, until he had to stop in front of what looked like some sort of bauble that either King Regis or one of the people who had found him had dropped. The cold energy increased thousandfold; it was like walking into a legitimate wall despite there being nothing in the dark.

He had left the Ring of the Lucii in its usual place, but this power was overwhelming. The familiar crackle of Crystal-given magic, the sound of glass shattering. For a split moment he thought he saw shards of glass float through the air just as they normally did when any of the people connected to the Crystal through the royal family of the royal family themselves called upon their weapons. A familiar flash of blue, swallowed by the eerie darkness that encased this still room.

The silence that Lunafreya’s sudden absence had brought was over. A shrill noise went through his head, shot through his entire body. It felt like something divine striking him, and Ignis could only sink to his knees with his head clutched in his hands. He had felt this before, though less agonising and more silently lethal in the past. He had tossed and turned in cold sweat for a week, his entire body feeling like it was coming apart at the seams. This was familiar, but when he tried to scream no sound escaped him this time. There would be no parents to fuss over him, no uncle to check in on behalf of the king, no prince whimpering by his side.

Ignis was alone this time and the sharp pain of Crystal magic incapacitated him.

The shrill noise died down, but all Ignis could do was sit there on his knees – where he belonged – and holding back a scream.

“ _What have you done, Ignis?”_

Lunafreya’s voice had vanished after a year of tormenting him.

He reached forward to snatch the bauble with a choke.

It was King Regis’ voice that now echoed through his head, clear and loud and _very_ confused.

* * *

In theory it was absolutely not possible. The more time he spent reading in places he was not allowed to be in, the more he realised why they were forbidden in the first place. Ancient travel logs that all coincided with the monoliths left inside the dungeons beneath ancient, often Sol creations; names that history had long forgotten because they lives they lived had been full of danger and tragedy. Ancestors who had done all they could, ancestors who had decided to leave these menaces for the King of Light to deal with.

Those people were dead and would not rise again.

As far as theories on the Ring of the Lucii in these forbidden documents went, most of them agreed that unless the wielder willed it it was very unlikely that the spirits that resided within, the titular Lucii, would manifest out of thin air or grant someone their blessings.

Something had happened that had unravelled some very basic things that most people in the past had agreed upon, and Ignis pinched the bridge of his nose. Lunafreya in Altissia, he guessed.

“Does that theory have merit, Your Majesty?” When he got no answer he sighed. “I’ll take your silence as a yes.”

He felt strangely invigorated ever since he had picked this thing up. Soon enough he came to realise that much like the Ring of the Lucii it bestowed some sort of power to the person who carried it around, a shred of the divine power that each and every king and queen had carried in the past. Whether King Regis liked it or not, Ignis was now carrying that around – he had attached it to his necklace, a dreary reminder of the promises he had broken.

Much like Lunafreya, King Regis soon turned into a broken record, though of a different kind. There was no pleading him to lead Noctis down a path that would kill him. It was a simple request, not from a king to his son’s servant but from one war-weary dead man to a man preparing to walk straight into a war’s purgatory if it could change the way history went.

“ _Ignis, go home.”_

He always retorted that Insomnia was his home.

It was, in a sick, twisted sense. King Regis merely repeated his words and Ignis would continue as if he hadn’t heard him.

* * *

Ardyn had to be aware of what was going on. Somehow that scared Ignis more than the fact he was haunted by the father of the man he loved more than life itself. Every uncertain step was met with almost brutal punishment until his body reacted faster than his mind did, and the pain response dulled down to a point where Ignis only reacted when he was in agony bad enough to be considered death throes. King Regis remained silent for the most part, did not interfere when Ignis came upon old documents.

In a sense this man who had kept so many secrets from him and his son was more pleasant company than the Oracle who kept on insisting that history needed to return to its original path.

The only parts where Regis spoke was when Ignis was writhing on the ground when everything hurt too much to continue, when Ardyn was almost angrily talking about how this or that action had been too slow, or too fast. Those were the only times that Regis did not repeat his favourite two phrases; _“What have you done”_ and _“Go home, Ignis”._

For a split second, barely more than a few heartbeats, it felt like someone placed a cool hand on his forehead, sometimes his cheek. Of course there was never anyone there, but Ignis always heard that soft whisper.

“ _Stop this madness, Ignis.”_

He did not stop.

There was absolutely no denying that something was throwing Ardyn for a loop recently as well, and Ignis thought back to the man leaning against the statue. Just the other day he had seen that someone or something had reduced it to almost crude chunks of rock, lifeless, formless. Nothing but more dust in the dead streets of a ruined city, and Ignis had pondered on that for a while.

If he had King Regis by his side like that, someone else likely had the Mystic by theirs. He frowned a little – the Mystic’s final resting place had fallen into the seething hot bottom of the Disc of Cauthess as Titan woke; if anyone had truly climbed down there they must have been completely insane. The only thing he could not immediately dismiss was the possibility that the Mystic had simply appeared in another’s grave or near the statue that was one of the few remains of the once lively town of Keycatrich. Perhaps someone from Lestallum had made their way to the Conqueror’s resting place and had instead been greeted by the Mystic.

It would certainly explain the Accursed’s extremely foul mood.

He was planning on lunging forwards, but the man seemed distracted. Ignis hesitated for a second, and that second was enough.

“ _Remember your oaths, Ignis. You don’t belong here.”_

Like Iris, like Cor, like Lunafreya… King Regis, too, insisted on repeating that Ignis should go home. But someone telling him that he did not belong here was new.

“ _Return where you belong. Return to Noctis. Cherish that time you have left with him.”_

He wanted to say something, but the sharp nose pierced his skull once more. The moment of Ardyn looking mildly distracted passed as Ignis let out a scream as he sunk to his knees, King Regis’ voice suddenly distorted and distant just as people usually described the Lucii sounding like in those reports he had read.

“ _Think of your place. Return to him.”_

He was on his knees again, a position he found himself in more often than he liked to admit. This voice was so unlike the soft, kind man that he grew up around; so very far-fetched from the man who had kept secrets likely to let Noctis and Ignis grow up in peace and just about as normal as a prince born to die and an advisor meant to replace him could. The shrill noise was making his eyes water and he heard himself wheeze and whimper before he raised his voice again.

“I can’t!” Ignis didn’t even care that Ardyn was there to witness this display of weakness. “Please, forgive me, but I absolutely cannot! Please, I’m sorry!”

His voice echoed strangely through the empty streets of Insomnia, went past groups of Daemons, past the Accursed.

Past King Regis.

* * *

He managed to hold himself together for a good week or so. The voice in the back of his head was surprisingly quiet; but he knew Ignis’ weak spot now. The part where his conscience still resided, that aching, bloody conscience that had been weeping since the day he attacked Iris, that had been screaming in agony since the day he had only been able to watch as Ardyn killed Cor. Ignis was standing in front of the Citadel, his defiance against the gods and the fate they had pushed upon Noctis breaking apart.

He had made no progress, as Lunafreya and King Regis had both pointed out by now. The fact that the late king had told him to cherish the time he had left with Noctis hurt more than he admitted out loud – the king sounded like he had been aware of those stolen kisses, of the promise Noctis made in the garden that had long since withered away completely and given way to decay and blight.

“You knew, didn’t you?”

A long moment of silence, like someone taking a deep breath. _“Yes.”_

“Then, why… why didn’t you ever...”

“ _Was it ever my place, knowing what would happen? As long as Noctis and you were happy.”_

Ignis continued staring at the Citadel, though his gaze was now fixed on the stairs. The very stairs that he had last seen King Regis on, back when they thought that Noctis was merely leaving to get married and they would return to the war that they had been born into having ended. With a heavy heart he had gone; Noctis too. And King Regis had looked like he had seen them off with an equally heavy heart. Noctis had even told the very man who would later kill his father to take care of him.

He was trying to think of something to say to the king, but his thoughts were tumbling over one another and no word escaped him. Instead hot tears ran down his face, silent and worse than anything else until he finally managed to think of something.

“I can’t go back. I can’t let him die. Not like this.”

“ _But still you belong to his side. It is not too late to abandon your post Ignis, and work on something else, with different people. A different solution, one that you cannot--”_

The voice that echoed through the darkness now was piercing, awfully cheerful, and it made King Regis fall silent in the middle of his sentence. “Oh, Ignis!”

He didn’t even make an effort to wipe the tears off his face, and he was fully willing to tell his ‘king’ to get lost just this once, but every thought derailed the millisecond he saw what Ardyn had brought here. Ignis had seen the chunks that remained of this statue, lifeless and definitely not wielding a weapon.

The statue of the Mystic, smaller than the one that Ardyn had destroyed but definitely built out of the same rubble that the Accursed had left after he had destroyed it in the first place. It was moving slightly – and that was what made all anger Ignis had been willing to throw at Ardyn dissipate immediately. It was only silent horror that was coursing through him as he watched Ardyn pat the statue’s head.

“Now, now, Somnus. Don’t be rude when I’m trying to introduce you to someone.” Ardyn jumped off the statue’s shoulder and stood there with a _very_ lopsided grin.

“H-How on...” He began as he looked the statue over.

It looked like a caricature. A crude drawing made in the likeliness of the Founding King, the man who had ensured that Lucis would one day exist as it did. The one who the gods had given the Crystal and the Ring of the Lucii to first, were history books to be believed. It was crumbling and dusty, barely kept together by wisps of violet miasma. Daemonic magic.

“Now then, may in introduce? Ignis Scientia, supposed advisor to the King of Light, crafty little nuisance, betrayer of blood royal. Somnus Lucis Caelum, the Mystic of antiquity, the Founder King, my beloved little backstabber of a brother. Both of you actually share a title – Replacement King. That is why I assumed you two would be _thrilled_ to meet one another.”

Ignis staggered backward, King Regis’ sudden silence scaring him more than the statue that took a slow and intimidating step forwards. Much like with Lunafreya before and King Regis now, Ignis was likely missing part of a conversation the Accursed was having with the Founder King.

Ardyn rolled his eyes before shooting the statue an unsettling smile. “Oh, I can, and I will. That’s the only reason I woke you rather than sending you back to sleep where you can but silently rage against who holds you, brother dearest.” Then he waved his hand at Ignis almost dismissively. “Your orders are to dispatch this crumbly bastard. Fail, and he tears you apart. Disappoint me, and I’ll be the one doing the tearing. Are we clear?”

Ignis was fully aware that he was staring at the statue with nothing short of fear. He was long used to Ardyn kicking him around, but this kind of threat was new.

“ _It is still not too late. Win this fight and go where you always belonged in the first place, Ignis.”_

Ignis made a decision that very moment. He would never bow to the gods, no matter how guilty he felt. He would not do as Lunafreya and Regis asked of him, and he felt a surge of determination. If he managed to appease that horrible man he would likely manage to get closer. Ardyn had to have a weak spot, and perhaps this way Ignis would finally learn of it.

He bowed to Ardyn and the Mystic. “As you wish.”

If he had still had the ability to summon his weapons from thin air he would have done so now. A flair for the dramatic that he had adopted since he had left Gralea, one that he hated as much as it amused him. Instead he was left to draw both daggers from their sheaths; he was not going to use the Trident of the Oracle quiet yet.

Ardyn definitely looked amused as he gestured vaguely at the statue. “Go on, Somnus. If you manage to defeat him I’ll even let you have a piece of me before I send you to the hell that I banished Crepera and Tonitrus to.”

Something about a person using the names of past kings and queens of Lucis so nonchalantly was extremely off-putting, but Ignis had other things to worry about right now. For a moment he and the statue both had their eyes – did statues even have eyes – fixed on Ardyn, then the hunk of rock and dust and miasma swung its sword in a wide arc.

A sharp gust of wind pushed Ignis backwards a little, flecks of miasma rushing past him as he covered his face. It made him pause for a split second; he remembered the conversation he and Ardyn had had not too long ago about magic. How only Daemons used wind magic, how the man had looked extremely confused.

Ignis shook his head. Less thinking, more attacking the Mystic.

The fact that he was fighting the Old Wall was already absurd enough to begin with. But there was something about this statue in particular that seemed… odd.

Ignis had always been the one analysing the battlefield, the one who remembered outstanding weaknesses and resistances. He had all but devoured every note from other hunters, every book that talked about certain groups of monsters and Daemons. It was easy enough to come to conclusions based on the look of the enemies after a while, something that the group heavily relied upon for a long time. Ignis was a strategist on the field who could react to developments rather than the one standing behind the lines who never fully knew what was going on.

The fact that this statue was barely held together by magic meant that a focused blast might tear it apart. All those cracks and tears in the rock made it easy for smaller weapons to enter and disrupt the balance; a precisely-placed jab with a spear might even send it toppling over if he had enough force or speed behind the blow.

He weathered another gust thrown into his direction and instead he looked at Ardyn.

“Is this your idea of a joke?”

“Oh?”

“Brother or not; this statue is crumbling apart.”

He caught the movement out of the corners of his eyes. Ignis rolled out of the way when the stone weapon was thrown into his direction, directly followed by the massive thing warping just as Noctis did. Fortunately enough Ignis had long since learned how to predict a warp, and a weapon this large was anything but hard to oversee. While the Mystic staggered after the landing, Ignis started frowning at Ardyn.

“In fact it is hardly a challenge. A well-placed blast or jab with the trident will make it fall apart, your magic holding it together or not. There’s only so much you can do.”

Ardyn… looked impressed somewhat. This was simultaneously the best and the worst thing that could have happened.

Ignis turned back to look at the statue.

The Mystic was widely regarded as someone they owed a lot to, Lucians as well as the rest of the planet. He had hand-in-hand with the first Oracle tried to banish the darkness, brought hope and unity to a country left in despair. Though Lucis was small by the time he lived, and would remain small until his descendants conquered the rest of the continent, most people talked about the Founding King like he personally brought peace.

Ardyn always talked about him with a strange mixture of bitterness and melancholy – they were brothers, after all. The victors always decided history; the Astral War ended with Solheim all but falling apart and vanishing into ruins and technology buried in those ruins. The victors of that, the Hexatheon minus Ifrit and Bahamut, were revered across Eos. Somnus was heralded for things that Ardyn had done, that was the way history went.

This statue just looked… sad. It was barely worthy of being called the Mystic any longer. Ignis sheathed the daggers again and instead grabbed the Trident of the Oracle.

“Could you _shut up_ already?” Ardyn’s voice rang loud and clear through the darkness, and Ignis was wondering what conversation he had missed there.

He took a deep breath.

“ _Ignis,”_ King Regis’ voice was rather quiet, gentle almost. _“Go back to Noctis.”_

It was a surprisingly simple motion, ramming that trident into the staggering statue’s back. The violet wisps that flicked out of every crack, out of every gash, intensified. It looked like it was being consumed by an unforgiving fire that looked so unlike actual fire. He heard the crack of stone and yanked the trident out again, turned around to face Ardyn.

The Accursed stared back.

Then he started clapping when the stone golem behind Ignis crumbled back into lifeless chunks of rock.

“Well, that was entertaining enough – and enlightening. I think I do know what to do about the clear weaknesses in the construction now. Many thanks, Ignis.”

Ignis turned back to look at what was left of the statue. It was still spewing violet wisps and some of the smaller pieces were still rattling. It was mildly unsettling, all things considered, but Ignis needed to think of something quickly. At least Ardyn’s seething anger seemed to have been quelled for a while now.

He took a deep breath.

“If you permit, I have some suggestions that might help with that.” He wasn’t someone good at building, but he knew it in theory. Ignis needed to stay close to the man.

“Oh, thank you _very_ much, but I think I have a solution to the problem already. Continue your training, I’ll let you know when I pinpointed everything.

King Regis’ silence was almost as devastating as being alone again after Ardyn left was.


	19. crown the king, dye the moon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alternate chapter names: "lets put a red line around the world" or "the one where the authors spellcheck just gives up"

Cid Sophiar and Cindy Aurum arrived as the last remnants of Hammerhead. Until the very last minute Cid had refused; it had taken getting a connection to Accordo and having Weskham Armaugh tell the old man to “stop being such a stubborn old dickhead” to make those two come to Lestallum.

Noctis still considered telling those two that Cor had died one of the worst things he had ever had to do – and he somewhat understood how Cor might have felt that day in the tomb, standing before the uncrowned king, his Shield, a noble and a commoner who were all crying. The silence over the phone and the shock on Cid’s face were two things that Noctis added to the mountain of things that started haunting him since Altissia.

Luna’s gentle smile. Ravus crying furiously. Aranea’s expression as she took off to find everyone else. The Niffs, shaken and bloody, and Iris standing in front of them just as beaten as they were. Gladio slamming his hand on the table after the hunters at the Vesperpool died. Prompto desperately gasping for breath as he said that he had to leave Iris behind to get help. Alto in the gardens. And Ignis, slowly dragging him down that walkway in Zegnautus Keep.

Not even two days after they settled in, Noctis found Cindy standing there with her hands on her hips in front of Gladio and a gaggle of Glaives, hunters and Crownsguard. Gladio looked mildly annoyed yet terrified, and the others were whispering to one another. Prompto, also in the group, was beaming however.

“I say we do as the lady says, Gladio.”

“And I say she’s had no training whatsoever, and--”

Cindy stomped her foot to silence the Shield. “’n I keep telling ya, I can learn. I ain’t gonna sit ‘round ‘n do nothin’ while y’all out there fight. I know my way ‘round Leide better than any of ya blockheads anyway, so why don’tcha train me proper so I can help scout ‘n get resources ‘n look fer missin’ people?”

Noctis let out an amused snort, and all people turned around to look at who was laughing.

He’d always quite liked how headstrong Cindy could be, appreciated how passionate she was. Truth be told he wasn’t surprised at all that she was trying to worm her way into getting out of Lestallum again – Hammerhead and Leide were her home.

“Take her along, Gladio. Teach her like you taught me and all those Glaives and hunters and what not.” Noctis shot him a smile, which Gladio replied to with a sigh and a shake of the head.

“Fine, if that’s what His Majesty wants. There’s just one warning I gotta give right away – we’ve lost plenty of good people out there so far. It could be any of us next. You willin’ to shoulder that risk, Miss Aurum?”

She put her hands on her hips with a huff. “Drop the missus part, Cap’n Amicitia. I’m under yer command from now on. Fully willin’ and rearin’ t’go!”

Iris and Prompto let out a whoop from the group, and most of the mixed bag of people from all over Lucis and even Eos also joined in with the cheering. Noctis shot another smile at Gladio, and his Shield smiled back.

“Well then, ‘Captain’ Amicitia, it’s about high time you got going, isn’t it?”

“Of course, Your Majesty.”

“And come back in one piece. All of you.”

They all saluted him.

Gladio snorted. “’Course we will, Noct.”

The group left, Cindy included. Noctis decided to spend the day with the trainees and people who were recovering from injuries instead of going out that day.

* * *

One of the last things Noctis ever foresaw himself doing in his life was having a friendly sparring match with a Niff. He’d never really considered Aranea one to begin with – mercenaries owed their allegiance to money rather than nations, and right now most people considered Aranea Tenebraen because she served Ravus. She usually commented on that with a shake of the head and a crooked grin.

“It’s convenient to forget I’m Niflheim born and raised just because I follow the prince of Tenebrae right now. Doesn’t erase the fact that I’m a Niff through and though, though.”

The harsh sound of a summoned weapon being immediately hit by something, a sound like shattering glass, echoed through the dark. He had just barely managed to intercept the blade that was being swung at him, several swords crossed and holding Loqi’s blade in place. Noctis was barely breaking a sweat but he remembered that this sort of summon had often taxed his father during the last years of his life, and he started scowling.

The former main street of Lestallum had been swept clean of Daemons – again. They did that once a day, usually to warm up before people left on missions on foot; most used what EXENERIS offered them to quickly travel across the countryside. Some others used cars, though fuel was likely going to be rationed even more than before. They needed the airships, and though those could run on electricity for a while they still mostly used fuel. And those airships were important.

Noctis, Aranea, Ravus and Loqi was a group of people that was usually joined by trainees or people about to get sent out again, but today it was just the four of them. Aranea and Loqi themselves would be leaving for Cartanica soon in order to check if the royal tomb there was still untouched or if it had been overrun by Daemons by now. They were still debating whether to check Zegnautus Keep again or not; Aranea and Ravus were both urgently discussing it. That was when Loqi had rolled his eyes and asked if Noctis wanted to spar while those two had their petty argument.

Loqi took a step backwards as Noctis dismissed the weapons.

“Dammit. I was so close this time.”

“Not many people can say that they got past weapons materialising out of thin air, though. That’s about as close as you can get, which is… impressive.”

Only the most senior members of the Crownsguard ever got that close. Cor had had his way to deal with it; two weapons at any given time and the sheaths of his katanas to push the Lucian royalty he was sparring against around and attempt to get around it. Gladio and his father both usually used their swords to occupy their lieges and then pummelled them with their shields. Some Glaives got rather far while Noctis trained with them, especially when they applied their warps in interesting ways, but very few ever broke through a stalemate with several swords holding their weapon back.

“Impressive or not, there’s still room to improve.”

Loqi was very much like Ignis in some ways. Both were obsessed with perfecting themselves in whatever they chose to do; though Loqi was much more focused on the military aspect than Ignis was. Ignis could lead a country into prosperity, Loqi could likely win a war in a few easy moves. It didn’t help that the two of them were rather strong, too.

Loqi’s blows had a surprising amount of force behind them for a man who had been bedridden for ages while recovering from almost fatal burns. That was where the similarities between Loqi and Ignis ended – and those between the Niff and Cor began. It was uncanny.

The fact that they both consistently said they could improve was just one of them.

“Yeah, sure, you can still improve but… do you have to?” Noctis shrugged. “You’re about to be sent out again with the others and… well, you outclass a good chunk of the Glaives who go out there regularly.”

“Irrelevant. If I can’t keep myself alive – who else will? … At least that’s what I was taught after… after.”

Niff nobility. Noctis remembered that woman talking to him in a hushed voice, about how the Tummelt family used to be one of the most respected families until the Immortal had completely humiliated the previously successful Lord Tummelt. How instead of living with the shame and working to restore his honour the man had chosen the easier way out and left a broken family with an equally broken reputation behind. She’d even whispered about how allegedly it was his eight-year-old son who had found the man after he had committed suicide, and all of a sudden the previously sweet and caring Loqi had been replaced by someone who had almost been obsessed with the military.

Noctis still didn’t really talk much to this Niff in particular, but he was starting to understand some of the thought processes better now that he spent a lot of time around Ravus. Niflheim had had a delicately woven net of propaganda and manipulation; though much of that could be attributed to Ardyn’s influence, Aldercapt himself had managed quite a lot as well. Loqi had grown up under it, had been tutored by someone who was widely regarded one of the most brutal commanders – and infamous for being rather abusive towards children.

Ravus had said that he’d enjoyed cutting Caligo Ulldor down more than he should have.

“Well, you’ll not be fighting on your own out there, kid,” Aranea intercepted, apparently having finished her argument with Ravus. The High Commander did look rather… odd. “You might as well be part of my mercenaries now, considering how much time you’ve been spending with Biggs and Wedge in particular. Dionus and Hesta, too. So, you’re pretty much an honorary Highwind merc. And that means, you’ll hang with us, whether you want to or not.”

Loqi rolled his eyes a little before turning back to look at Noctis.

“Well, since they’re done having a spat… Guess we’ll have to continue this match at a later date.” He bowed. “Your Majesty.”

Ravus looked like he was deep in thought when Aranea grabbed Loqi by the arm and started dragging him away.

* * *

“Back already?”

“Well, yeah. We went ‘n checked Keycatrich just as ya suggested, Majesty, but… Nothin’. I ain’t ever seen that woman, but there was nothin’ down there that was still alive other than us.”

Cindy in a practical hunter’s attire was something that Noctis still needed to get used to, but the ragged look of someone fighting for the people of Eos suited her. He did notice she looked nervous, though.

“Cindy, are you feeling all right? You don’t have to force yourself to do any of this.”

Her parents had died in the dark. Prompto had said that during her first venture outside she had looked incredibly nervous and been on the verge of tears at some point, but she had soldiered on and on and never once complained about it. In the week since then Prompto and Cid had both worked together to get her something like the machinery Prompto used and that Cid modified for combat, to no avail until one day they discussed it with Loqi nearby. He’d seemed out of it since they returned from Cartanica, from the Warrior’s tomb, but the second he had caught the conversation Prompto, Cindy and Cid were having, Loqi immediately butted in. Noctis had passed that passionate discussion of technology between the Niff and the Lucians, something that was surprisingly uncommon still.

Cindy was now using something similar to the thing that Prompto so proudly called his Bioblaster, though hers was… more unwieldy, somehow. It was massive to begin with, but Noctis tried not to think too hard about machinery. She was leaning against that with crossed arms now, a deep frown on her face.

“Well, I get what’cha mean t’say. Paw paw gabbed about me bein’ scared of the dark, didn’t he? But no, ‘s not be bein’ _scared_ of it right now. I meant it when I said I was ready t’do anythin’. ‘s more… y’know, she’s missin’. So’s that Glaive everyone respects so much, what’s his name, Libertus? Keycatrich’s been desolate fer so long, I was sure someone’d be hidin’ in there. I was expectin’ a pile’o bodies. But nothin’. Nothin’. ‘Cept for that there tomb.”

“Ah.”

He should have expected that much. Libertus had been approached by the Mystic in that tomb, which did not make much sense once Noctis started thinking about it. It had likely been related to the fact that the Mystic’s tomb had crashed into the Disc of Cauthess and the last remainder of Keycatrich was the statue of the Mystic just outside the trench where the Conqueror lay. But the fact that the Conqueror had not given anyone his blessing yet remained.

At least until he saw the little silver mark that Cindy had attached to her uniform.

“Interesting. I was wondering who the Conqueror would choose.”

“Eh?” She looked honestly shocked as he said that, and Noctis grinned at her.

“People are being chosen by the kings of old left and right. You ought to go find Iris, she’s been at it the longest. Prompto’s pretty good working with the blessings of an old king, too, but he’s busy with Loqi currently.”

It had been an interesting party composition to begin with, but the fact that Loqi returned shaken to the core was something that Noctis would not be forgetting any time soon. Much like Ravus he had been clutching the sigil to his chest like a lifeline, a haunted look on his face when they returned to Cartanica.

“Then again, Prompto would probably sell Loqi to the Accursed for free if you asked him to.”

That made Cindy laugh at the very least, and she waved her hand at him a little. “Aw, bugger. I ain’t gonna ask him t’do that, ever. Loqi’s the blonde Niff, ain’t he?”

“That’s him.”

She seemed to think about it for a while. After a moment of consideration she brushed a blonde curl out of her face. “Any chance ya know where t’find ‘em right now?”

“If they’re not on the street outside they’re probably loitering around West Street at this time.”

* * *

It was times when no one was around that Noctis started curling up again, just as Ravus had suggested over a year ago.

He’d avoided thinking about it, but just a few hours ago a bunch of hunters had returned from their scouting mission. They had said that they had indeed come across the Wanderer just as the reports from every other tomb had suggested, but the king had refused them. He had said that he would refuse all of them, because his choice had been made ages ago – an advisor to the crown he would support, none else.

Suddenly Ignis was back on Noctis’ mind, and it hurt even worse now than it had back then, though this time he was not incapacitated by it.

He’d thought a lot about the people who had died lately, and Noctis came to the sobering realisation that there was a fair chance that Ignis might die too, especially if he was being controlled by Ardyn. The man had not had any qualms about killing Luna, had likely turned most of Niflheim into a desolate wasteland filled with Daemons that had driven the few survivors into underground shelters where they either turned into Daemons as well and started tearing one another apart or where they remained, unwilling to come out for fear of persecution. Those Niffs that were here, in Lestallum, were far and few between, but those people had started integrating themselves rather well.

Ignis would have liked seeing that.

Noctis buried his face in his hand as he sat there shaking. He’d never been separated from Ignis for so long, even back when their studies had demanded most of their attentions, Ignis had managed to keep a few hours a week free from anything to help Noctis with his homework if necessary, relay information from the Citadel, or even just to lean against the kitchen counter with a cup of Ebony in his hands and an almost serene smile on his face as he listened to Noctis complain about school on the couch.

It was almost as bad as the horrible sting that had knocked the wind out of him half an hour ago, and if anyone were here right now Noctis would be calling that a ten on the scale – completely mind-numbing and depressing, not very likely to get better unless a miracle happened. He’d only used that once before, and it had only been Ignis who had heard him say that. It had been after the first time he’d gone into stasis, not something he remembered very well. What he did remember was how Ignis had immediately cancelled any and all of his appointments and slept on the couch for as long as Noctis needed him to.

Noctis would have given anything for the door to open and for someone to burst in to tell him that they had found Ignis, knocked him out, dragged him to Lestallum. Sometimes he dreamed of that and woke up feeling content until the realisation that it only been a dream crashed into him and left him unhappier than before. Other times all he could feel was the coldness of steel against his throat and Ignis’ steady breath in his ears as he dragged Noctis along the walkway.

Of course nothing ever changed. Ignis remained missing just as his mother and Libertus did, and Lestallum felt like it was stagnating. Their losses were going back as if Ardyn and the Daemons were giving them a moment to breathe; but all Noctis could do right now was think about Ignis. The way his advisor’s face lit up when he was being praised, the way he smiled. That day he’d lost his glasses to a wild Chocobo, the way he’d looked completely disgruntled despite the fact he always carried a spare pair of glasses around. How Ignis usually woke Noctis by gently pushing the hair out of his face. The lingering touches, the small and knowing smiles. All those times they danced around the Behemoth in the room before Noctis decided to solve that problem in the glittering light of the sunset being reflected off the other buildings, warm orange also reflecting off Ignis’ glasses as Noctis pulled him down to crush their lips together.

He could still perfectly picture Ignis, but the image did not overlap with what the others said about him. Ignis always took care of himself; those reports of a man with strangely unkempt hair and a scar running across his jaw and nose and stopping just underneath his left eye did not fit the man who would clean his glasses every ten minutes while thinking about things. It was what made the sleeve they had found near Cor even more suspicious; as if someone was trying to tell them that Ignis had killed the Marshal.

Noctis rolled up further on the bed with a whimper. The pain across his back was almost unbearable – perhaps calling it a ten was not right, but it was one of the higher numbers, definitely. He slowly closed his eyes and tried to ignore the pain.

He woke when someone was patting his head gently. The hand was way too big to be Ignis’, but for a split second he almost wanted it to be his advisor, the man he still loved so much that it made him nauseous.

It was Gladio instead.

“How bad?”

“Something… between seven and nine. Not an eight exactly but… it’s all three, I guess.”

His Shield nodded slowly before taking his hand away. Noctis whined.

“Keep it there Gladio. Just for a little bit longer.”

Gladio snorted and ruffled his hair affectionately. “Well, I’m not gonna move you around when you’re in pain, so consider this one of the patented crushing Amicitia hugs.”

Noctis let out a soft laugh. “My third-favourite in the whole wide world.” Gladio knew that numbers one and two were Ignis’ gentle embraces and those rare times when his father had not been too busy to hold his son for a few minutes. “Why’re you here?”

“Just because I felt like you could do with some company.”

He was right, of course, and Noctis nodded. “Anything of note happen?”

“Nothing, really. But. I was gonna ask if you wanted to come out of Lestallum with me. That kinda became a moot point when I saw you lying on your bed with your face screwed up and you asleep, though.”

Noctis hummed a little as Gladio continued patting his head gently. “Well, we can go once that pain stops. I miss hanging with you. I mean, not that that really matters since you’re the head of the Crownsguard now and all that jazz but… y’know.”

“Pff. I know. It’s okay. We can just go another time.”

This was… nice. Not as nice as having Ignis back would have been, but despite the pain Noctis enjoyed having Gladio around, even though the Shield very quickly started talking about scouting reports and the like.

* * *

“There’s two things I’d like to say.”

The group this fine, dark day was Noctis together with Gladio, Aranea and Ravus. He’d noticed all three of his companions carried sigils around – he knew that Ravus had the support of the Oracle, the silver charm attached to the weapon that Emperor Aldercapt had handed him when he was promoted to High Commander. Aranea had put hers on a dog tag necklace she’d started wearing; she was a mercenary hired as a huntress and thus she ought to start acting like a huntress she had said when asked about it. Noctis saw that she had even engraved her own name and birthday on it like hunters all across Lucis did, and it made him mildly uneasy. Not because he knew how old he was – he couldn’t care less about it – but because it reminded him of the fact they were all so hideously mortal and could easily die out here. Gladio had attached his to his jacket. In the cold of the dark even Gladio had started wearing a shirt underneath the jacket nowadays, even if it was still his stupid tank top and it made Noctis shiver with cold just looking at him.

Gladio had started talking after they had worked together to take out what seemed like a nest of Mindflayers in the Duscaen countryside. Just beyond that was a stash of canned food; those creatures had started hoarding this and the four of them had gone to collect that stash.

Ravus had his hands on Noctis’ leg, a warm and greenish light covering the cut on it. It wasn’t an Oracle’s powers, but Ravus was definitely one of the most skilled healers around Lestallum – he’d even managed to save a woman they thought would die from blood loss before anyone could stitch her back together the other day.

Aranea huffed; she was the one who was tossing the cans into the bag they had brought. “Then get on with it, big boy.”

Ravus snorted, and Noctis too couldn’t hold back an amused chortle as Gladio rolled his eyes.

“Right, right. Well then, first ‘n foremost. The High Commander Nox Fleuret over there brought that to my attention recently. Noct. Do you reckon we should hold an official crowning ceremony one of these days?”

Noctis flinched. Everyone called him ‘majesty’ but technically he had not officially succeeded the throne yet. There were several key components missing for that, from nobility to the most important part of the ceremony. “The crown and the Ring of the Lucii are missing, though.”

“I was,” Ravus began as he removed his hands to look at the cut properly, “more thinking of a short ceremony to boost morale. Crowns and rings or not, perhaps something like that will dispel the sullen cloud that’s been over Lestallum for the last few weeks. A crown we can easily make with what we have in Lestallum.”

Gladio crossed his arms. “Which brings us to the second point. We were… thinking of whether we should try reclaiming Hammerhead or not, and if we do, why not go _further?”_

He paused. Even Aranea stopped chucking cans into the bag to turn around to look at her companions, her eyes narrowed as she thought about what had just been said.

“Now, hold your young Chocobos there for a sec. Sure, crown one prince and reclaim his fallen city. But, Ravus.” Noctis hadn’t even known that they were on first-name basis now, but Aranea had her hands on her hips as she looked at the High Commander. “You’re technically a prince too. Crown prince, even. How about we crown you and him?”

Ravus only shook his head. “The High Commander of Niflheim who just so happens to be the late Oracle Lunafreya’s older brother won’t have the same morale impact as Noctis Lucis Caelum, prince of Lucis, chosen by the gods – the tragic survivor of the Lucian royalty who had to watch his _beloved_ die in the wake of Altissia’s downfall.”

The silence that spread between the four of them was pointed – every single person here knew that Noctis loved Luna, but an arranged marriage was the last thing he ever wanted since he was already involved with Ignis Scientia. The man who was missing, the man a good amount of people suspected to be the one who had murdered Cor Leonis in cold blood. Ravus eventually sighed and stood back up straight to walk over to Aranea.

“We can of course skip the coronation. But Insomnia… Insomnia might be a turning point.”

Noctis also stood up and frowned at Gladio. “You’ve got something else on your mind, don’t you, Gladio?”

His Shield sighed and looked around to check if there were any stragglers or late arrivals; but of course no Daemon interrupted them as Ravus put his remaining hand on Aranea’s cheek to heal a deep cut on it.

“I know you and most people believe that Ignis is being controlled. Easiest way to check is… bring the battle to Ardyn’s doorstep. He vanished but considering survivor’s reports… well the crown city is a cesspit of Daemons. From the weakest Daemons to the strongest you can probably imagine – and that would be Ardyn in any case. Also, most of the Glaives voiced interest in seeing if they can salvage something from Insomnia. ‘Here’s to the fall, and all shall crawl back in’ they said.”

Aranea and Ravus were bagging up the last tins, and Noctis continued frowning.

“Well, we’d have to think about it and plan it in detail if we wanted to do that. Gimme a while to ponder on it.”

* * *

He missed the stars at night. Nothing of the like was happening now; only the distant glow of runes etched into havens in the distance appeared. But the ground was hardly the skies that he and Ignis had looked up to so many times with books in their hands and that serene smile Ignis always wore when he was enjoying talking about something. Perhaps it weren’t the stars he missed but rather the times he sat or stood there leaning against Ignis and listening to him talking about constellations and star showers that were happening that year in particular.

Now only dark, foreboding clouds covered the skies; only a vaguely brighter spot telling where the moon was. Noctis paid no attention to it and instead was trying to figure out where the Glacian constellation would appear at this time of the year.

He turned on the roof several times trying to remember how to pinpoint dead north without the stars and a compass around, but mostly to no avail.

He froze when he noticed something off in the distance.

The Glaive they had sent to the Rock of Ravatogh a while ago had wound up dead in the main street, their body clearly tossed there for fun. Which implied that Ardyn had had his hands in that man’s death. Noctis’ eyes were locked onto the volcano in the distance. It had continued spewing its ash even as darkness settled, an ominous glow in the distance along with the havens sprinkled across the countryside. But now something had changed in the few moments that Noctis had turned his back to that part of the country while trying to find the north.

The moon beyond the clouds seemed brighter now than it had before, but the colour was odd. Instead of a strange silver tint the clouds near the moon were now tinted blood red. The earth rumbled slightly as Noctis stood there on top of the building uncertain what to think of this right now.

Behind him someone burst through the door and skidded to a halt beside him gasping for breath – Prompto.

“Noct, what the shit’s going on? Cindy and I were just talking and suddenly the moon behind the clouds turned all fucked up!”

“I… I don’t know.”

The rumbling continued; it reminded Noctis of the time the Archaean had been awoken. It seemed so long ago now that the headaches had tormented him, and apparently Prompto was thinking the same things.

“It can’t be Titan again, can it? The empire killed his body!”

“Did that ever matter to any of them, though?”

Prompto and Noctis had both seen the gods come to their aid countless times. While Ramuh’s status was debatable, Titan had appeared time and time again to support them when hunts and the like took a turn for the worse. They both knew that bodies mattered little to deities, which Shiva’s appearance in Tenebrae had only cemented even more. But why on earth would Titan be shaking the ground now, especially when everyone was fighting for survival, technically? He voiced that concern, to which Prompto replied with a confused noise.

Then the rumbling stopped.

It was replaced with the distant roar of something exploding, and Noctis and Prompto clung to each other as they watched the Rock of Ravatogh spewed forth flame and rocks.

“What the hell!”

Something was happening over there, and Noctis couldn’t shake the feeling that Ardyn was involved in that mess somehow.

And if Ardyn was involved…

“Ignis...”


	20. "Maybe you should run," your reflection in the mirror says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE NOTE:  
> the fic's going to escalate. i might have to up the rating to explicit for Non Sexy Things soon-ish.
> 
> i know a lot of you are rooting for a turn for the better but. it's gonna be a downswing. one that we can recover from? who knows (i do, but spoilers). if you're here bc you wanna see a good resolution with the good people 100% winning,
> 
> you're allowed to hop off.
> 
> we aren't quite at the escalation point (i WILL point that one out properly when it arrives, don't worry) yet but, uh, we have a scourge death in this chapter.

Talking to Daemons was one thing. They never responded; the intelligent ones that were capable of speech clearly still out in the field rather than gathered in Insomnia.

Talking to the ghost haunting him was another thing. Eventually Ignis stopped responding to King Regis and ignored the almost desperate pleas to return history to its correct course that he started muttering just as Lunafreya had had before him. He marched through the city determined and content with how things were going – Noctis was not gathering power for his own death at the hands of the Lucii, of his own father, of the gods that had placed this burden upon him.

Ardyn was going completely nuts, but Ignis was learning quite a lot just watching the nonsense that the Accursed was currently calling his ‘pet project’. He’d never really bothered with statue construction but like so many other things, Ignis had studied it more or less at some point. Surprisingly enough, that one subject in particular had been one he had picked himself instead of something that King Regis or his uncle had suggested. For about three months he had been fascinated with it, then dropped it when the workload increased again.

To think that it was now helping him keep the Accursed in one place for long enough to study him properly.

That man had centuries of knowledge in that head of his, but most of it was buried underneath layers upon layers of almost petty spite and something undefined, darker. Yet despite all that, Ardyn had somehow managed to forget about rather important details about statues. It almost seemed too good to be true, but no matter how much he probed he was always met with either content hums of realisation or plain stares of someone not understanding what was going on.

He wasn’t really like the Lucis Caelums that Ignis had spent his life around or had heard about at the very least. King Mors was usually described as almost direly serious; King Regis was noble to a fault… and Noctis was Noctis. The man Ignis would sell the world for to save.

Ardyn on the other hand lacked most of the noble features, likely rotted away over the course of history. He had a very dry humour and even drier responses to majorly inconvenient things – being buried underneath rock and having several bones in his body just plain crushed while bleeding out slowly had only gotten a chortle out of the man before he died. Ignis still had to get used to his body vanishing completely when too many things were broken beyond repair, he vanished in a puff of miasma like Daemons did only to reappear somewhere nearby a few minutes later. He usually looked annoyed by then. Internal injuries usually had him lie around until it fixed itself.

“Nothing like getting turned away at the doors of death,” he’d said after reappearing once, “but enough about that, what was that about balancing that you were saying before everything came crashing down?”

He had the typical Lucis Caelum limp as Ignis had noted a long time ago, though he usually moved that extravagantly that it merely looked like a quirk rather than something actively debilitating. It was baffling on so many levels. He also talked a lot slower, though that likely came from the fact that Ardyn had lived through entire dialects dying out throughout time; he would have likely made an excellent historian if it weren’t for the fact that he was the undying Accursed.

It was just so very unfortunate that Ignis did not manage to see a particularly glaring weak point. He had his strengths, he had his weaknesses. In fact, Ardyn was anything but physically strong. Sure, there was a lot of force behind his blows, but now that he thought about it Ardyn generally had some sort of momentum whenever one of these blows truly hit hard. The rest of the time he was messing with magic, something that almost rivalled his dry wit. Ardyn was a mage unrivalled in his territory, and not even the more crafty Glaive mages that Ignis remembered – Crowe Altius, for example – came even remotely close to matching him. It was frightening on more levels than one.

It didn’t help that Ignis was finally able to see what the weapon that would have been left in Ardyn’s tomb if he had been a normal Lucian king in their latest training session. Ardyn was surprisingly non-violent in that one, which made Ignis suspicious nearly immediately.

The second that weapon manifested Ignis was fairly certain that he was going to die for real this time. Ardyn however merely swung it into the ground, the crystalline-looking blade piercing the cement like it was nothing. The intimidation tactic worked – that scythe was a truly horrifying weapon. It was also the time that Ignis realised that Ardyn’s moniker would likely have been something relating to magic; and the more he went over lists of all nicknames that Lucian rulers were known under the more he started to realise that something rather simple one was conspicuously absent.

The Sage.

It seemed almost _too_ ironic that Noctis had named one of Ignis’ tactics the ‘Sagefire approach’. Ardyn was the Sage, Ignis’ name meant fire.

He definitely did not sleep after realising that, instead tossing and turning in his bed until all he could do was laugh. Laugh and cry. He needed to wrap this up before he completely lost his mind.

* * *

“ _There’ll be a point that you absolutely cannot return from, Ignis. Don’t let it come to that.”_

He stuffed the Ring of the Lucii back into the wardrobe and huffed.

“And as I’ve told you hundreds of times at this point, Your Majesty. I would love to return, but I am _absolutely not_ handing Noctis over to the gods and history as sacrificial lamb.”

“ _You still have time. Abandon your course before worse things happen.”_

* * *

Hammerhead had been evacuated. Ignis almost missed those defiant lights so close to Insomnia yet so far away from him, but he preferred knowing that Cid and Cindy and Takka were all safe and far, far away from Ardyn’s immediate reach. Away from Ignis’ immediate reach.

Still, seeing the place abandoned now was more startling than he could admit out loud; it had been the first place the group had stopped at when they had just left the crown city. A small station in the middle of nowhere on the way to Galdin Quay, and their forced first stop because the Regalia had broken down. Ignis almost wanted to return to pushing the car into Hammerhead and being approached by Cindy just as he was done wiping sweat off his forehead.

He watched a bunch of lesser Daemons scuttle about the place – thankfully Cid and Takka had locked the doors to their places so they would be safe until the Daemons decided to break the windows for some reason or another.

Ignis turned around and was about to stroll back towards Insomnia when he caught a sluggish movement out of the corners of his eyes. It definitely was not a Daemon or Ardyn; those moved differently and he had long since gotten used to them. It couldn’t have been an animal, almost everything here in Leide had long since gone extinct or moved into Duscae. It wasn’t a hunter either, the movements were too choppy and the person was lacking the practical clothes that hunters wore.

He stared into the direction of the movement for a second – but nothing was there any longer. Which meant that something was messing with him; but there were no Daemons around other than the ones that were bouncing around Hammerhead. All of those were rather low-tier except for the handful gargoyles or whatever they were called again, Ignis didn’t remember right now.

It had to have been a person. Ardyn, perhaps?

He was about to say something when arms were slung over his shoulders. Ignis froze; he hadn’t heard someone behind him. Then again those arms were… not the arms of a hunter.

“Found you… Ignis.”

Not even once in his life had he considered that voice to sound like something out of a nightmare. He fought himself out of the grip and turned around.

Rhea Scientia’s smile was oddly unhinged; her face and posture in general were a far cry from how he remembered his mother before they left Insomnia. Nothing was left of the noble woman’s dignified expressions, her eyes were oddly vacant as she stared at her son.

“Look at you… who did that to your wonderful face, little Iggy?”

All Ignis could do was blink. She looked starved, haunted; her voice was raspy and sounded like she hadn’t done anything but scream for a long time.

Cor had told him that she was alive, had been evacuated together with other Crownsguard family members, was likely befriending the Argentums. Safe, sound. Something that couldn’t be said of his father and uncle, of Gladio’s and Noctis’ fathers. This woman however looked very little like his mother, and that was about the most unsettling thing.

She coughed as he took a step backwards.

“Prince Noctis lied. Said he’d find you. Never went. But I found you. Ignis.”

“… Mother.”

Noctis was the only person who had ever really talked to his mother. Ignis had spent most of his time at the Citadel to begin with, together with his uncle rather than his parents, but the two of them had always supported him. Said that his dedication was admirable, even though his mother clearly looked like she wanted to spend more time with her son. But in a strange reversal of the Argentum family, it had been the son who had been so busy he usually slept at his workplace instead of the parents.

She moved way faster than she should have been, considering that she was slouched over. Before Ignis had time to process it correctly she had lunged forward and pulled him into an embrace again. It wouldn’t have been so unusual – were it not for the fact that her skin was almost scathing hot to the touch, her breath was erratic and the embrace went from strangely reassuring to crushing in a second flat. Her fingers were digging into his back.

The erratic breathing turned into laughter after a few moments; he meanwhile realised how incredibly hard it was getting to breathe. She was quite literally attempting to crush him.

“I… can’t breathe. Mother, let go… please.”

She didn’t let go. A horrible cracking sound echoed through the darkness, but it was not his ribs being crushed. It wasn’t until he felt the sting in his back that he started struggling against her grip. At least the sudden movement made her let go enough for him to worm out of it, but he heard his shirt tearing as he stumbled backwards.

Now that there was distance between them again Ignis saw what he had just heard – her hands looked like horrible caricatures, a mixture between a Daemon’s claws and the hands that always held him when he was a child seeking solace from a nightmare.

The choppy sentences, the heat that seemed to almost throb around her, the sound that was something between a sob and a laugh now. The fact that her eyes were glinting in the dark. Ignis had to hold back a gag, a sob, whatever it was that was currently going through him. He chose to exhale slowly.

Rhea Scientia was turning into a Daemon.

There was blood running down his back where her claw-hands had torn into his flesh, and she was staring at him with a mixture of horror and _hunger._ A Daemon’s instinct was to tear into living beings, but she was still human enough to realise that it was her own son she was considering tearing into little ribbons.

“Ig… nis.” That gargling sound was awful. It hurt worse than broken bones and collapsed lungs.

He had assumed she was still in Lestallum. But this… Ignis shuddered as he watched something black seep out of her eyes and roll down her face.

“Why didn’t you stay in Lestallum…?” She could have avoided this. Instead she stood there shaking, the heat rolling off her in waves in the cold darkness just as it rolled off Ardyn whenever he lost his grip on his humanity.

“Liars… liars, all liars… you’re here, you’re _fine_ , you’re not missing at all, not in danger.”

For once he would have liked King Regis butting in. But the only thing he heard was his mother’s loud breathing and the sound of the Daemons over at Hammerhead screeching – they were ignoring her because she was that far gone already. Another victim of the Starscourge like they had been, and Ignis clamped his hands over his mouth.

She was reaching for him and he half-heartedly dodged her attempts to grab him again. The way things looked and considering that she had nearly crushed him earlier she was likely turning into a subspecies of those terrible hobgoblins, and Ignis could do was keep his mouth clamped shut and his hands over it. He was fairly certain if he let go he’d have thrown up, the erratic movement as he avoided his own mother definitely not helping his case.

There was some awful noise that he registered as a screech she was letting out after a few seconds, and Ignis shook his head. Finally he dropped the hands.

“They told you I was missing and you decided to leave a safe place to find me?”

“And I found you!”

“ _Mother._ What if they were lying, but not in the way you assume they are?”

She stopped at long last. Half slumped over, her sunken eyes still glinting in the dark, ichor rolling out of the corner of her face and out of her eyes, down her arms. It was positively ghastly to watch and Ignis suppressed a horrible sob. She was just staring at him, wisps of the by now familiar miasma drifting upwards, away from her.

While she was standing still like that he could put her out of her misery. Theoretically. Reunite her with his father and his uncle, but somehow he found himself paralysed. He couldn’t. Not his own mother. Not even as a mercy. Not after having been unable to do anything as Ardyn did the same to Cor.

“You found me. You want to take me home, don’t you?”

“Of course… of course.”

He shook his head, his entire body feeling oddly leaden as he watched that hunched over _thing_ that spoke with his mother’s breaking voice. “They’d execute me for high treason if you did.”

“No! No, Ignis wouldn’t… Ignis wouldn’t, not the prince, no matter how much he… lies...” Another horrible cracking sound. “You’re not Ignis.”

Was he? Iris had said the same.

Ignis himself didn’t know any longer. The voice in the back of his head still called him Ignis – but was he truly still the same man who set out from Insomnia on that fateful trip that would inevitably bring him to Altissia, to the Altar of the Tidemother? What if he had snatched the Ring of the Lucii and had beaten Ardyn down right then and there?

He’d just have come back afterwards. Ignis had seen it countless times.

He shuddered. “Unfortunately… I am Ignis. Stupeo Scientia, Ignis; ex-advisor to Noctis Lucis Caelum, 114th King of Lucis, the Chosen King of Light. Your son. Your beloved son who was always too intelligent for his own good, and look where it got him. Now he’s a traitor to the crown just because he couldn’t deal with losing the man he loves.”

He turned around and ran. His mother’s screech died down before he was completely out of earshot and the presence of another Daemon on top of the ones that were already there made him stop and realise that he now truly was the orphan people always believed him to be.

* * *

“ _Run while you still can.”_

Was it King Regis or Oracle Lunafreya? Something about the atmosphere in Insomnia felt off, and the voice was strangely distorted. Likely it were both of them at the same time, repeating what the gods told them to say. Much like Noctis was supposed to be they were puppets on strings that were supposed to dance as the gods demanded. Ignis was definitely not having that, but as he left the Citadel that day he noticed how _off_ things were.

First, there were absolutely no Daemons in the streets.

Second, it looked like someone had messed with the rubble around the Citadel.

Third, Ardyn was _smiling_ at him.

“… Is there something you need from me,” he paused for a split second before adding, “Your Majesty?”

At least that made Regis and Lunafreya shut up again. No more telling him to run – apparently it was too late for him to run now. Whatever it was that they were talking about. Then again they always picked back up whenever he least needed them to; so it was only a matter of time before they would be back.

He sincerely hoped that next time they had something to say other than telling him to run, return history to the correct course and the like. Perhaps blame him for his mother’s sorry end; Ignis certainly blamed himself already but perhaps someone else tearing into him would make this less painful than it was.

Ardyn continued smiling. That good mood was _obnoxious,_ and Ignis nearly growled. But he needed to uphold the facade.

“I’d be taking my leave if there’s nothing you need of me.”

“Oh, no. Pack your things, Ignis. We’re going on a trip.”

“… I do not have any things worth packing, Your Majesty.”

The only things that were still worth anything to him were the Ring of the Lucii, the promise that he would find a way to safe Noctis; and his dagger. The one he only called a memento – and somewhere down underneath the determination, he was laughing at how hilarious it was to carry the Trident of the Oracle and a pair of daggers called a memento and Mori.

“Good, good! Let’s get going then.”

That good mood was so very, very alarming, but Ignis knew it would be worse if he refused. At least the danger kept his mind away from the sound of his own mother turning into a Daemon behind him.

* * *

Sitting in a car without lights next to Ardyn Izunia was… less than relaxing. Ignis could still vividly picture Noctis crossing his arms with a cocky grin as he leaned backwards in Lestallum, his eyes seeking Gladio before he said that perhaps he ought to ride with Ardyn. He still vividly remembered that grin that appeared on the back then “man of no consequence”’s face – something between amusement and what Prompto later called a “slasher smile”.

Ardyn’s amusement quickly faded into the general annoyance that Ignis had gotten to know over the last year and a half. It was less unsettling than the obviously faked grins and smiles, relieving almost. The Accursed was an impatient man, not someone who looked like he’d be good company for a drink. Ignis had seen the man kill Cor in cold blood with nothing but a scowl of displeasure for Ignis’ conduct on his face.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “So, where are we going?”

“Rock of Ravatogh.”

The fires of that place had died down almost as soon as darkness had fallen. Noctis had retrieved the royal weapon buried on top of it next to a giant bird’s roost long ago, and Ardyn himself had snatched the sigil that the Fierce had bestowed a Glaive from said Glaive. Ignis furrowed his brows.

“Any reason in particular?”

“Oh, you’ll see.”

Ignis sighed, remembering what awaited on top of Ravatogh. “I refuse to hunt an endangered bird to extinction.”

“Who do you think I am, the _Accursed?_ I’ve better things to do than go after a giant bird. Unless it becomes the absolute necessity, of course.”

“I also refuse to destroy a royal tomb.”

“My, my, aren’t you high-strung today? Who’s saying we’re climbing the damn thing to go to _that_ part of it?”

Ignis remained quiet the rest of the day until he eventually barely managed to keep his eyes open. Ardyn had dragged him out on a whim, into a car, and they were now crossing quite literally all of Lucis to go and stare at… something. He fell into an uneasy sleep that was soon filled with static buzz as completely incomprehensible nightmares started. Whatever it was, it was not unlike the visions he had had thanks to Lunafreya and her Messenger dog, but those were not the same images of Noctis getting impaled over and over. There were weapons glinting but somehow… somehow Ignis wasn’t entirely sure what it was depicting.

It was too fuzzy and terrifying for him to focus on it, and he jerked awake after a while with a gasp.

Ardyn said nothing and continued driving, but Ignis caught the way the Accursed looked at him for a second. Ignis merely proceeded to rub his temples.

“Where are we…?”

“Past Cape Caem.”

It was hard to tell in the dark, but quite a lot of time had passed. Ignis barely recognised the shores, but now that he looked around he did recognise this place. He remembered Iris pointing out things, how they took one last side venture to rest at a haven before they parted ways again at Cape Caem. The way Gladiolus looked strangely apprehensive the entire time – as they would learn later he was gnawing on a plan to leave them for a while to mend his broken pride. The way Iris looked so strangely sad when she thought no one was watching.

All those people who were in Lestallum now, safe and together with no way of Ardyn directly interfering. The man wouldn’t kill the Chosen… he hoped.

“ _Please. Go back to my son.”_

Ignis rubbed his temples with a soft groan and decided to go back to sleep.

* * *

They’d come here after hearing about a giant bird and a buried treasure along with the local legends about a wrathful creature being buried here. Most of the population really only cared about the four of the Hexatheon that had any sort of presence; Titan was always clearly visible, thunderstorms were seen as Ramuh’s way of telling the mortals he was still here, Shiva had _died_ after Oracle Sylva had and Leviathan was a subject of many an art installation in Altissia despite the fact proper worship had died down over the last hundred or so years. The fact that the Rock of Ravatogh always seemed to spew forth fumes and fire with intervals of quiet rest only told about the fact that the fire god was likely resting here.

Since Ardyn had ruled out going on a bird hunt and the tomb was empty and the Fierce’s blessing already snatched from its recipient… it only left the formerly smouldering cauldron of fire somewhere up on the volcano. The fire that never died, only went out for a few years before another eruption was imminent.

He felt like he was trespassing on holy ground, somehow, even though he had been here before.

Perhaps it was the fact that the fire was gone. An eerie stillness, like a held breath, had swallowed up the Rock of Ravatogh as Ardyn and Ignis scaled it. Only once he heard the rush of feathers and felt a gust of wind did he look up to stare at the bird just as they had at the beginning of their journey, on their way back to Hammerhead. Ardyn too stopped and looked after it before shaking his head.

“Enough marvelling at the wonders of nature. Move it.”

“Of course.”

The bird was circling the volcano, though not a single screech escaped it. It seemed to be watching, just as the Daemons that scuttled around the place were. A handful of the entire cluster of Ahrimans was following the bird along; they were capable of flight but not for extended times. The Zu itself remained just barely outside of their range.

Ardyn only stopped again when there was nowhere else to go. Back when Ignis and the others had been here they had been hindered by a source of lava, the heat too much for them to continue onwards and forcing them to circle back down and scale the cliffs to find what they were looking for. Now the path had been free, though warm to the touch still he had crossed past that and was now staring into what looked like a black hole. Something ominous was in there, like a heartbeat that was very slowly continuing despite the utter darkness around them.

“Now then, you’re a clever boy. Tell me Ignis – why are we here?”

“… We are here for what remains of the Infernian, aren’t we?” His voice was a whisper, almost drowned out in that loud horrid beat somewhere on the Rock of Ravatogh.

Ardyn slung a hand around Ignis’ shoulder and pulled him in. Ignis shuddered; even now Ardyn was unbelievably hot to the touch – though that would likely just be a mild warmth compared to the Infernian once the Accursed managed to rouse that long-forgotten deity.

“Precisely. Do you have any idea why?”

He shook his head. “No.”

The Accursed laughed, his voice echoing in the dark. Like a long-forgotten curse placed on the planet – in a sense he was, and that was what made Ignis shudder again. “And here I thought your otherworldly companions told you everything about it. Tell the fair Oracle and the late king that they make bad teachers. But, as I was about to say, your beloved Noctis needs more than just the power of the Crystal and the Glaives of rulers past. Covenants of those that permit it. But that leaves him with five out of six.”

“A… test of strength, then?”

Once more Ardyn laughed, barely more than a bitter bark at this point. He let go of Ignis and took a step closer to that pitch black void in front of them. Ignis hoped he was imagining that darkness starting to swirl in the cloak of eternal night.

“Why do you reckon burning bodies is a custom across Eos? The dead reanimate if they harbour even just an inkling of the Scourge. Twist and turn, but they reanimate, start hungering for flesh. Only light can truly burn a Daemon away. In order to get rid of the source, all elements will need to join.”

Ignis shook his head. “The Infernian would never enter a covenant.”

“But he can be bested in battle, his temporary allegiance forced into position. Alas, he needs waking for it. Unfortunately we lack an Oracle to sing us a song of peaceful awakening, which leaves us with only one thing left to do.”

“ _He’s going to kill you. If not now, he will eventually. We are but mortal playthings, quaint possessions to be discarded at the earliest convenience.”_

He took a step backwards.

“How would you fan the flames for a god whose element ever represented life, Ignis?”

He gave no answer for a minute or so, still trying to seek a way to escape. Eventually Ardyn sighed.

“And here I was calling you a clever boy earlier. Or are you perhaps too _scared_ to say that simple one-word answer?”

Ignis breathed in. Breathed out. It seemed like the world was holding its breath, time stood still. The Zu was still circling above them.

“Death. The answer is death.”

Ardyn clapped. Once. Twice. Ignis closed his eyes and heard the telltale sound of something shattering into existence; as much an illusion as it was real by this point.

Then silence.

He opened his eyes again just in time to see a giant shadow plummet past them, into that swirling abyss in front of Ardyn. Somewhere in the distance the Daemons screeched.

“You said you wouldn’t--”

“Change of plans. I do need the Infernian to at least listen to me,” Ardyn’s voice was barely louder than the deep rumble that now shook the earth around them, “but I loathe giving deities _my property._ ”

Property.

Ignis was stumbling backwards but now that Ardyn had plunged a dead creature into that abyss he stepped away from the edge. The Accursed only shook his head and turned around to face Ignis. Then he lunged forwards. Grabbed Ignis by the arm and hauled him back up. The earth erupted all around them and all Ignis heard was Ardyn’s voice, speaking a language he did not understand at all.

A literal shield of countless crystalline weapons was shielding them against lava, and much like Ignis had predicted, Ardyn’s body temperature was nothing compared to the sheer heat that was turning his whole body into something that no longer responded to his commands. Something rose from the depths of that flow of lava, something that looked very precious little like the deity in the Cosmogony. Dark. Corrupted.

The heat was all-consuming, choking. Ignis sank to his knees, still somewhat held up by Ardyn’s iron grip on his arm.

“ _Ignis. Oh, Ignis.”_

A dull pain went through his entire body as he passed out, the sound of the language of the gods ringing in his ears, seeping through a dissonant vision of the Infernian and the Accursed, of fire and Noctis staring at him through the veil of flame.

“Please, forgive me...”

* * *

He woke with a start. His mouth was dry and he felt like he was burning up, and he had absolutely no idea where he was.

Ignis scrambled to his feet; something smelled like fire, he tasted soot. He desperately struggled against what he thought were the people from his nightmares holding him down.

Then someone put a hand on his forehead and forced him back down to the floor. That hand was cool against his skin, like rainfall at night after a hot and humid day. There were some strange lights that kept on flickering wherever he was, but everything was too blurry to fully comprehend.

“Shh.” The vague shape was a person. But who…?

His uncle? King Regis? His mother?

“Noct…?”

He narrowed his eyes and the blurry person shifted into something a little more coherent.

Ardyn.

Of course. Why should it have been anyone else?


	21. sound the crystal bell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> would it be a fanfic by me if theres not something about flowers in there at least Once?

“Is this _really_ wise, Noctis?”

“We need to make certain nothing more than an eruption happened.”

“No, I agree we do. But is taking most of the more capable fighters along with you wise?”

Noctis shook his head. “I’m not going without Gladio, Prompto or you, Ravus.”

It had been three days. The had waited for the quakes to subside properly before Noctis decided it was time to act – an investigation team, if only to make certain there were no casualties. As far as Lestallum knew the region around the Rock of Ravatogh had been properly evacuated ages ago. Those people were now abuzz with worry about what had happened to the surrounding regions.

“Besides, this is more to pacify the people who worry. Loqi and Cindy are working on tracking down Rhea Scientia; they found a trace recently. Aranea and her mercenaries have been instructed to help the hunters specifically.”

Ravus still frowned. But he did not ask if this was wise again – which was good. Whatever doubts he harboured he would not talk about them; there was a lot that Ravus still refused to talk about. Noctis had never had the mind to ask about these things, but sometimes the Niffs exchanged glances with the High Commander that were downright worrying. Usually the MT project was involved when this happened, though Aranea usually reacted to those talks more than Loqi.

Ravus’ apprehension was strange. Noctis, Gladio and Prompto discussed their previous climb on their way there, cramped together in the Regalia. How they had found nothing of note other than a small pit of lava that had forced them to turn around and scale the volcano differently. Ravus continued frowning deeply, no matter how many breaks they took. The closer they got to the Rock of Ravatogh, the paler he became. Eventually Gladio sighed.

“Okay. Spit it out.”

“Excuse me?” Ravus, who was also sitting in the back, turned his head slightly towards his left. He wasn’t even looking at Gladio, who was now crossing his arms.

“Something’s bothering you to the point you look like someone gnawed off your good arm.”

The fire had died down again. It had been a single eruption, lasting about ten minutes. Once that had died down Noctis and Prompto had hurried down into the street, collected Cindy and gone to call in an immediate emergency meeting. It had been less than 48 hours ago.

“...” Ravus looked out of the window. They were nearly at their destination, and the air in the Ravatogh region looked worse than the air around Insomnia looked. It at least was only plasmodia infesting the skies around the crown city especially, but here it was soot and ash and plasmodia. It honestly looked revolting and all four of them had brought handkerchiefs to not inhale this mixture constantly.

“Spit it out, Nox Fleuret, you look like you’re about to explode. What are you expectin’? The worst?”

“… No. Yes. I mean.”

Noctis stopped the car. This was about as close as they were going to get, and all four of them exited slowly, with Ravus apparently still trying to think of ways to get out of this. Eventually the High Commander resigned to his fate of having to talk about it, considering that Gladio was still glaring at him.

“Fine. The worst case scenario is Ardyn was here and roused the Infernian – and the Infernian agreed to whatever terms the Accursed offered.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Theoretically you can wake the slumbering Six even without the song passed through my bloodline. _Theoretically.”_

They walked for a while, Prompto almost bouncing around in excitement despite his earlier worries of just being four people in what would likely be a Daemon-infested wasteland. Noctis on the other hand started getting worried – there was absolutely nothing around. Not a Daemon. Not a person.

Nothing.

“And how would you wake a slumbering god, fleshless soul sleeping in the abyss or not?”

Gladio sounded mildly annoyed as they marched across the countryside. He had had his sword and shield out earlier but he had since dismissed them, his eyes still focused on the still apprehensive Ravus.

“Depends on the deity in question. Shiva never truly went to sleep; as someone who watches the beyond rather than this plane she cannot for as long as there is life on Eos. With no Oracles so to speak of priests in Solheim had… devised other ways. Before the Astral War, mind.”

“Get to the point, Ravus.”

Noctis definitely did not like that worried glance the High Commander shot him. Prompto pointed out there was a shack nearby that had not been hit by debris from the explosion.

“Fire in Solheim was a sign of life. Ifrit was called the god of fire and life. Rousing a deity without an Oracle’s powers means something has to happen that goes against their aspect. Sniffing out a flame.” Ravus sighed and clinked his prosthetic arm’s fingers together, metal against metal. “The flame of life, specifically. Sacrifices.”

He stopped there, but everyone else made the connection. Gladio narrowed his eyes. Noctis only stared blankly at Ravus, his thoughts raising.

Prompto had slapped his hands over his mouth. “You don’t think he--”

“Don’t! Don’t say it.” Noctis’ shock turned into fury. It was plenty immature, but he stomped his foot on the ground; only ash and soot rose and small rocks went flying away. “He’s still alive. He has to be!”

* * *

The shack was completely desolate. Something made Ravus upset as they stepped inside; the Tenebraen gagged slightly.

No one asked about it because there was nothing in here that seemed suspicious and the other two went to take a nap. Noctis leaned over to Ravus as they kept watch.

“Any reason for your frown?”

“… This place carries the stench of the Scourge.”

* * *

They returned with nothing of value learned or lost. The path up the mountain had been destroyed, and though Noctis had offered warping up and checking everything they ruled that out. Ravus and Gladio agreed on it being too dangerous for Noctis alone; no matter how strong and how many kings of old Noctis had by his side, if Ardyn was still up there he’d be in trouble without the Crystal’s power. At least the news of nothing being there pacified the more worried voices in Lestallum; a handful people from the Ravatogh region furrowed their eyebrows but eventually agreed with the majority. After all, it were just local legends that something dark slumbered in the Rock of Ravatogh together with something that would one day bring light to the land. Legends almost never wound up to be true.

Noctis leaned against Prompto with a huff. His friend only let out a soft laugh and jabbed him in the arm.

“C’mon now, Noct. You’re acting like I just made you run the Insomnia Marathon.”

“Knowing you, you would’ve.”

It had been three days since they returned, and Noctis didn’t exactly want to go out of the city. Prompto, too, stayed inside in the event that Cindy and Loqi returned, so they spent the time together. Prompto had dragged Noctis through the power plant; though women still did most of the work in there there were a handful men also helping with the less important jobs. A bunch of Glaives even used the top of the power plant to teach members of the Crownsguard and a handful hunters who had asked Noctis for his power how to warp. None of these training sessions were in effect today, so Prompto had dragged Noctis all the way up there.

The city had grown so much in these nearly two years since darkness had fallen. A last defiant stand against the Accursed.

Some were even discussing attempting to regain the other outposts. Noctis and Gladio both agreed that while it might boost morale it was too dangerous with the Daemons growing ever stronger and the number of people slowly dwindling.

“Wouldn’t that have been a riot. Me, Prompto Argentum, commoner extraordinaire. And I force Noctis Lucis Caelum CXIV to run the Insomnia Marathon. I can just _see_ the Citadel officials and council members demand my head on a silver platter.”

“The only silver platter there’d have been in that event would’ve been… Ignis, bringing us two refreshments after we finish. Encouraging words for me, and a light slap on the head for you.”

The sad thing was he could picture it. The Insomnia Marathon had been a yearly staple, one that Prompto often talked about wanting to run one day. Noctis always said that once they were done with school Prompto would be more than able to train for the next one, but Prompto had instead joined the Crownsguard to stay close to his friend as they mulled over whether to go to university or not. All plans had been cut short when the peace treaty had come up, however.

Somewhere in another reality there would be Crown Prince Noctis helping his friend Prompto train for the Insomnia Marathon rather than King Noctis sitting back to back with his friend Prompto on top of Lestallum’s highest point one could reach without warping.

“Yeah, I can _feel_ the slap, now that you mention it. The abyss of disappointment, all reflected in the glint of Ignis’ glasses.”

Noctis let out a long sigh.

“Shit, sorry.”

He shook his head. “No, don’t apologise. I’m just… worried, you know.”

Prompto suggested they leave, so Noctis followed him back down. At some point he had considered warping and leaving Prompto behind, but it felt wrong. He already barely spent enough time with his friends now that they had taken over other duties; Noctis stayed in Lestallum enough or was always with people that Gladio explicitly trusted enough to keep his liege safe. There was no denying Ravus or Aranea were some of the strongest people around; and Lestallum was safe.

Prompto was fidgeting by the time they were back on the main street.

“Seriously, Prompto, it’s fine.”

“No! No, I was… thinking about something else entirely.” He let out an awkward and nervous laugh and suddenly Noctis was reminded of the day that they had left Insomnia together. Prompto had acted similarly back then. “Like, I know you’ve got your walls up and all that. I’ll back off if you don’t wanna talk about it. But, Noct. Man, have you _talked_ about this with _anyone?_ Like, seriously sat down and tried to unravel your own feelings, and stuff?”

He hadn’t. “Who set you up to that? Gladio? _Ravus?”_

Prompto shook his head vehemently. “Hell no! No one set me up. … Okay, Cindy asked if you did, and it’s been in my head since.”

Noctis groaned. “You’re my best friend, man. If I wanted to seriously talk about this mess with someone, you’d be… like, the first person I’d come to. I’m fine. I’ll manage.”

They remained silent for a while, still walking side by side. It didn’t take them long to reach the greenhouse district again, and Noctis swallowed down the worry that always wrapped its cold hands around him whenever he got close to this place. He hadn’t properly been inside the greenhouses since Alto’s death.

Lestallum wasn’t as safe as he assumed, he realised when Prompto also paused. Apparently he’d realised where they were and he had definitely seen Noctis’ dark expression.

“Let’s go somewhere else.”

Surprisingly enough, Noctis pushed open a door and stepped inside. “You coming or not, Prom?”

His friend blinked several times, and Noctis decided to decide for him. He grabbed his arm and pulled him inside behind him. Prompto stumbled in and then they walked through in silence. Noctis sometimes stopped to point out plants that Alto had talked about at length, and sometimes he caught a bunch of things that Ignis had used before or talked about in passing. Prompto not once interrupted him, always listened and seemed genuinely interested whenever Noctis did the pointing out. He’d even just simply pat Noctis on the back when he eventually admitted that he missed Alto even though they had barely really known each other. Another person on the list who he missed and who he would never get to talk about again.

Then they reached the flower department. The flowers weren’t being grown for anything but the fact that they looked pretty – with the exception of the Sylleblossoms. They were a silent tribute to Oracle Lunafreya – beautiful in every regard, but all Noctis saw when he looked at them now was a long dead field of these flowers, felt the crisp sting of frost, the glitter of ice and the dim light of the Glacian. They were standing between Accordan lilies and a Niff mountain tulips when Prompto stretched.

“You know… This is nice.” He seemed aware of what he had just said and turned a deep crimson. “Not the eternal darkness thing. Not the Ignis thing. Most of everything. It sucks, honestly, but this place it’s… it’s nice. Calming. Don’t think I’ve ever seen a Niff mountain tulip up close.”

They were a surprisingly dull and unremarkable flower; Noctis had read about them before. They weren’t even a subspecies of actual tulips – those flowers only really grew in Tenebrae and some of the outer islands that made up Accordo. But those so-called mountain tulips were gorgeous, brilliantly white flowers that grew even in the harsher and drier climates of Niflheim before the Glacian had wrecked that country’s ecosystem with her death. The flowers had allegedly died out, and Noctis knew that these flowers growing here were a last-ditch attempt to save the species. They were slightly yellow, perhaps cream-coloured. Still light but not as white as freshly fallen snow.

Alto had talked about these exactly once. Had said that one of the Niff soldiers’ wives had handed him a packet of seeds. Said that her mistress had asked them to take care of those before she died. Noctis had asked who the woman’s mistress had been, and Alto had merely sighed and drawn a hand through his hair.

Fallen noble family, was all he had said and Noctis _understood._

“I guess that’s why they made room for these agriculturally useless plants. They’re nice. They remind us of better times.” Noctis crouched down to look at the Niff mountain tulips closer. “And some of them tell a story.”

“Ignis would’ve loved to hear those stories.”

Noctis felt his insides constrict, but Prompto had crouched down next to him and immediately put a hand on his shoulder. Though it still hurt to think about it was so relieving to have Prompto with him.

“He would have. And he _will_ hear them. Once we get him back here.”

Prompto only hummed lightly in agreement and they fell silent for a few minutes.

“We will, Noct. Promise. We’ll get him home.”

That bright smile always cheered him up, and this time it was no exception. Noctis smiled back.

* * *

“I have… a confession to make.”

Noctis dismissed his weapon with a shrug.

“You and Aranea? I know there’s _something_ going on, you guys are on first name basis--”

“No! Not Ara-- there’s _nothing_ going on between me and the Commodore.”

He turned around to look at Ravus and saw that he had at least hit a nerve. The man looked rather flustered, though that was quickly taken over by annoyance. Noctis laughed. Then the annoyance faded and was once more replaced with Ravus’ generally unreadable expression.

They’d been dispatched to take care of a Daemon infestation around a wreckage. It had only been goblins and hecteyes thus far, which meant that there was something bigger hiding in his bog. The big ones usually hid until the smaller ones were all dispatched or had tired out the people enough to make easy pickings. Which was hilarious because in the cases of something big already being out in the open it were the smaller ones who acted precisely the same. It was all covered in training, and Noctis had long since grown to anticipate something like this.

Their targets were taking their time, though.

“As I was trying to say.”

“How bad is it that you’re waiting till we’re knee deep in a swamp? Bog. Nasty still water that’s mostly mud and oil. You get the point.”

If anyone had ever told him two and a half years ago that he would be comfortable being around Ravus Nox Fleuret after he turned 23, he’d have laughed. Nowadays it was almost normal to see the King of Lucis and the Crown Prince of Tenebrae talk together as if they were old friends. The fact that there was still something of a rift between the two of them remained, but it had gotten a lot better since the informal crowning ceremony a month ago.

“It concerns your father’s murder and the night your kingdom fell.”

Noctis felt time stop for a second.

It was something that Ravus absolutely refused to talk about. He had gone to Insomnia as deputy commander of the Niflheim army, a Tenebraen son full of rage and hatred with no less than two arms and likely dark determination – he had left it with one arm less, humbled to the very bones, and as High Commander of the Niflheim army, Ravus Nox Fleuret. Brother of the runaway Oracle, supposed brother-in-law of the supposedly dead prince of Lucis. Now he was a crown prince again, of a country that had long since lost all relevance and that was a bunch of people living in his manor at his permission. His people.

Sometimes he forgot that technically Ravus had still been the enemy when he offered taking them to Gralea in the aftermath of the covenant. Theoretically, with the emperor and the ruling council missing, up to and including the civilian council that Ardyn was the chancellor of, Ravus was the de-facto ruler of the Niflheim Empire.

Ravus jabbed his sword, his most prized possession, into the murky and incredibly awful-smelling water they were standing in. Even he had foregone his usual attire to wear something that could be cleaned easily, nothing more than some hunter’s attire. Practical. The dark colours only made Ravus’ pale skin stand out even more. If it weren’t for his usually dark expressions, Noctis realised that he would have been just as extremely handsome as Ignis was – but both his advisor and the prince of Tenebrae were rather guarded about their expressions and their emotions in general.

“There is a reason for why most members of the Kingsglaive are hesitant around you – though the most prime example of this has since died.”

Whatever had gotten Libertus, at least he hadn’t suffered for long. The same couldn’t have been said of many other victims of the eternal darkness lately.

Noctis shuffled in the dreadful water.

“Perhaps this in part is not my confession to make, but it is necessary. Most of the Kingsglaive had turned against your father by the time you left the city.”

He blinked, several times. It didn’t make sense to him in that very moment. The Glaives had always been friendly but devoted. Their oaths allowed them to use a power that most people would never get to taste in their lives; the powers of the king and the Crystal. They were taught how to warp, how to manipulate energies and magic. While Lucis had never truly gained the upper hand, the Glaives had always been there to reassure that next time they would win; Noctis had assumed that much like Ignis they would have agreed that while the peace treaty was far from what they expected that it meant peace rather than the pointless fighting. That they would pursue the finer arts of controlling the powers.

His heart was racing as he stared at Ravus.

“Had the man behind the mask of General Glauca not demanded that he be the one to kill your father… I would have. Without a shred of remorse, without a second thought. … I was wrong, Noctis. Wrong about you. About your people. About _him._ But I was too blind to see such, even as the Lucii cut me down to size.”

Noctis blinked again. “The… Lucii?”

Ravus once again drew his free hand through his hair. “Foolish are those not of Lucian royal blood who wear the ring and make demands of ancient spirits.”

“Is that… is that how you got… the arm?”

“Precisely.”

There were many things going through his head, many things he could have asked. All Noctis managed to choke out was “General Glauca killed my father?”

The High Commander seemed to be thinking of a way to deliver that news properly without shell-shocking Noctis into inaction – they were still on a hunt, technically, even though their targets were taking their sweet time to arrive at last. “Did news of who was behind the mask ever make it out of Insomnia, or did that information die with the countless traitors of the Kingsglaive?”

Noctis said nothing, and Ravus slowly exhaled through his nose.

“So it did die with them.” He traced half a circle in the water with his empire-issued sword. “Titus Drautos. That was General Glauca’s name.”

Noctis didn’t get the chance to react to that, because Ravus shoved him out of the way. Their targets had arrived; vicious and spewing venom, coiling and hissing like the giant snakes they were. Mutated under the influence of the Scourge and the lack of sunlight, more deadly than ever.

“I was too blind – but no more.” There was the familiar flash of bright light that Noctis had long since come to associate with the older Nox Fleuret sibling. The same bright light that Luna had used to heal rather than tear apart, but that was the difference between them. Luna had healed – Ravus destroyed.

Noctis summoned a lance to his hands. “You with me?”

“As I should have long ago.”

* * *

“How bad?”

“Just a four.”

He’d woken in agonising pain after yesterday. Loqi and Cindy had returned from their trip, both with extremely haunted looks on their faces. It had taken Prompto some serious coaxing to make them talk, and all Cindy had done was break into hysteric sobbing. Prompto had held her as Loqi slowly and steadily began talking about what they encountered – a Daemon that _spoke._ Spoke of a liar prince and its son, how it wanted the old times back and how perhaps tearing those two pesky hunters apart would get everything back to normal.

It had been too close to Hammerhead, on a street – Loqi wordlessly handed over what looked like a mostly empty wallet. Inside, Rhea Scientia’s ID, and everyone knew what had happened.

“Gladio, are we doing the wrong thing?”

He turned in bed to look at his Shield. The man looked like he had barely slept either.

“Wrong how, Noct?”

“Should we have… marched into Insomnia with reckless abandon and taken down Ardyn with weapons raised?” He hissed slightly as he moved, but Noctis wanted to at least sit for this conversation. “We’re still losing people. There’s more refugees coming in, but we lose about the same amount of people that we get again. If this is a war of attrition we’re going to _lose_ it. It’s been almost three years since we last saw the sun rise and… I don’t know if… can we _really_ do this?”

A good amount of people simply left Lestallum and never returned. Ravus had said that those were the cases that would be turning into Daemons soon, people who did not ask to be killed before spreading the disease further and having their bodies burnt on a pyre. He hadn’t said it, but everyone present yesterday knew that Ravus did lament the fact that he lacked the power to purify. Prompto, too, had looked like he wished he could help with that.

Gladio himself had vanished into a makeshift library near the Leveille. Books from all around the planet were stored there, not only the kinds of novels Gladio used to read on the road but also a great selection of non-fiction.

“We can. Trust me, we can, Noct. We just need a bunch of things figured out. First and foremost, we need to recognise cases of Scourge faster. I’ve been asking holes into Ravus’ pretty little brain for hours, but we’ve not yet come to a coherent conclusion.”

Noctis fell to the side, against Gladio’s shoulder.

Of course they needed something like this. The signs of it were hard to see when there was no natural sunlight; light-sensitivity especially was a problem underneath the electric lights of Lestallum. With the water strictly rationed everyone seemed to have dark smudges that looked unhealthy nowadays. The only thing that reliably worked was checking for fever or higher than usual body temperatures in general, but there were a few people who simply caught some sort of virus every once in a while. If they were to execute suspected cases of Starscourge they would only cause panic was what Gladio said.

“I’ve been thinking, Noct. You’ve got Shiva’s covenant, right?”

The power of ice that ran through his body, a familiar hand on his shoulder that never once truly reassured him but at the very least it was familiar. Ramuh, Titan and Leviathan usually were somewhere in the back of his mind, but Shiva was present whenever he thought about her or anyone mentioned her. He shuddered.

“Who told… Mhm. Ravus told you, didn’t he?”

“Yes. To be fair, I asked about the ice goddess in particular.”

Noctis moved slightly and Gladio sighed. “Why?”

“Now, that’s gonna sound stupid. We wanna retake Hammerhead and at least part of Insomnia. Build a base there. But we’d need more water, and we cannot ration it any more.”

“Oh.” He understood. “So you want me to ask her if she can, like… freeze something and then we wait for the water to melt.”

“The ice might even help some of the kids who complain about the heat.”

His brain was stuck on the Scourge, with Shiva’s hand on his shoulder. Cold, firm.

Terrified.

Luna and Gentiana did never speak without a reason. Noctis poured his heart out to the notebook, its pages slowly growing brittle from the sheer amount of times he leafed through it to reach the final page. The dried Sylleblossom that Luna had put in there as her final message had become something of a promise to Noctis, the promise that everything would be okay. He believed it, truly trusted her and Shiva’s guidance that everything would be all right. But after yesterday he had realised, once again, that it was foolish to believe that this would be like the stories and fairy tales that Luna and he had read back when they had been children in Tenebrae.

Something was upsetting the goddess of ice, and Noctis felt his heart skip a beat. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be good.

“I’ll try talking to her.”

Gladio nodded.

“Did you need anything else, Gladio?”

Gladio shook his head and Noctis sighed into the man’s arm.

“Can you… stay until the pain gets better?”

“I was planning on doing that.”

He could always count on Gladio being there when he needed him. Noctis closed his eyes – when he woke again after that Gladio was still there, also asleep.

* * *

The warps were precise, terrifyingly precise. At first it had been a fun challenge for those of the Crownsguard and the hunters that asked to get the king’s power – the Glaives had suggested it on a whim. It was no secret that warping was hard, but the long and arduous training was starting to pay off. Iris in particular warped with a precision that only Noctis managed to outdo; her talent was frightening. Even a bunch of trained mercenaries like Aranea’s unit had to admit that there was something about the daughter of House Amicitia that wasn’t entirely usual, even if she did some from a family that had protected the royalty of Lucis for as long as the royal line had existed.

The only ones outside of her own brother who were matched with her in the field were Prompto, Ravus and Aranea.

Said dragoon narrowly avoided being clubbed in the head with a training weapon buy jumping away; the precision of her movements still managed to completely captivate most watchers of the training match that was currently going on on top of the power plant.

Iris was starting to look frustrated, and Ravus held back a laugh. Frustration at how agile Aranea was despite the sheer weight of her machine spear was usually the beginning of the downfall, and everyone here knew it. Gladio called to his sister to keep it together and focus. Prompto and Cindy were both cheering loudly for both Iris and Aranea and switched the cheers every once in a while. Somewhere on the ground Noctis saw a group of people stand near the bridge that led to the plant proper, all of them watching the quickly moving dots that were Iris Amicitia and Aranea Highwind – Cid was down there, too.

Cid had in fact been the one who had overseen the modifications to Aranea’s spear that Cindy, Loqi and Prompto had suggested. This match was to see if they had worked; and the only reason Iris was stuck with a training weapon was that the brute force of her attacks matched that of Gladio nowadays. The ragtag group of technophiles hadn’t finished the protective plating just in case something arose in the test drive, as Cindy called it; and too much brute force with an actual weapon would have rendered the one-of-a-kind weapon useless.

Cheering erupted from the ground when Iris did land a blow on Aranea and sent the dragoon falling, but Aranea nearly immediately caught her footing and bounced right back up to clobber Iris.

“Man, makes you wonder what a dragoon’s training is like. That’s so cool!” Prompto looked over to see Aranea ricochet off a wall.

“It’s harsh. Her weapon was a unique commission perfectly made for her needs, she’s… outstanding to begin with, but that weapon makes her better than most other outstanding dragoons. I don’t think anyone ever truly went toe-to-toe with the Commodore,” Loqi said, “except for the High Commander. I think.”

Ravus grumbled something that sounded a suspicious lot like “She kicked my ass, Tummelt,” and then fell silent again.

They had agreed that they would attempt to retake a part of Insomnia. The underground, specifically, if it hadn’t completely collapsed. Like rats in their own home, but as long as the Ring of the Lucii remained missing there was nothing they could really do about Ardyn and the Scourge.

This was a test run to see if Aranea and Iris as part of the brute force commando would work nicely. And since they were so evenly matched it was rather clear that they would be an excellent choice for this.

* * *

He made it rain once. Inside the greenhouse district, for a bunch of children.

Leviathan was less than pleased to be called for something like this, but eventually she had caved. Noctis suspected that the other deities had talked her into answering his call, and the copy of herself that was made of water was pitifully small. As it moved it looked like it was raining in here, and all of the kids were watching it with wide eyes.

The Altissian kids were excited to see their deity answer the Lucian king’s call. The Lucian kids simply enjoyed the rain together with the few Tenebraen ones. The Niff ones were staring at everything with wide eyes; they only knew snow. The caretaker of this particular part of the greenhouses simply seemed to enjoy the fact that she wouldn’t have to water everything for the day.

For a moment he felt at peace. Perhaps this was something he could have done if the peace treaty had not been a sham, once he ascended the throne. A world at peace, the children of the different countries of Eos together as if their nationalities did not matter. It would have never happened that way, Noctis knew. The Niff children wouldn’t be the wide-eyed and friendly kids they were now; they would have been influenced by propaganda for years, led to believe they were better than the others.

Right now in that greenhouse they were all the same. Even the king who was summoning the goddess of the deep to make it rain a little was the same as the sniffling child who was marvelling at the way the water clung to the plants.

Maybe Noctis was just imagining the smell of Sylleblossoms. Then again, Luna had wished for peace too. This had been her dream, he realised with a jolt. A world not divided by borders, united under a common cause. Somewhere out there were her brother and a bunch of Lucians, working hand in hand to expand the city a little to accommodate a handful Niffs who had finally given in and listened to their High Commander. They would be leaving their home behind – and they were going to get welcomed with open arms rather than open suspicions.

Three years in the dark. That was all it had taken for most of the hostilities to cease.

There were still people who had their reservations about this. Even the Niffs agreed that they should not be receiving this treatment, but in the end everyone seemed to think the same.

As long as they still had hope, there was no way they would lose to the dark.

That was what held back the Scourge, too, as Ravus finally admitted one evening.

Hope.

It could lessen the symptoms, delay the transformation for years. He said that Emperor Aldercapt had somehow managed it for years with ambition, there were plenty of people who were infected and fully aware of it, but they had found a purpose in the dark that kept them from despairing.

As long as they kept despair out of everyone’s hearts, there was no way they would lose.

That was what Luna had said that last day of her life, too.

That was what Ignis always said after the fall. As long as they kept themselves from despairing they would be able to drive the empire out of their country and take back what was theirs.

They would succeed. Once they got Ignis back. Noctis smiled as the water snake dispersed and the little rain show with it. The children cheered and thanked him profusely, called him the greatest king they’d ever met.

He managed to not burst into tears that moment and instead shooed the kids out of the greenhouse and back to their parents.


	22. HAUNT

“ _Your little plaything has a point. You are my brother, no matter how twisted you have become under the curse placed upon you.”_

Oh, he could almost see that pitiful look in his brother’s eyes. Ignis was standing there strangely collected for someone who had been crying a few minutes ago. Perhaps figuring out that this hunk of rock was shoddily built had calmed him down somewhat.

Ardyn let out a snarl. “Could you _shut up_ already?”

* * *

Dragging an unconscious man down a mountain was more work than it was worth it – usually. Ardyn felt the bitter pang of something so hauntingly familiar that he had to dump Ignis in the nearest untouched shack and collect his thoughts.

The Infernian had been thoroughly unhelpful. A scorned god, long since driven mad by what he had unleashed upon the planet in a fit of rage. Much like Ardyn, Ifrit would be something that would be swept away in the wake of dawn. But the Infernian remained unhelpful, vengeful. Claimed that Ardyn had no right to come here with the King of Light still not within Reflection, that Ifrit should have burnt Ardyn and his _mortal plaything_ to a crisp for disturbing his rest. He’d left it at that and vanished into the pitch dark abyss that throbbed with the Scourge, an infestation much like Ardyn himself was at that point.

He sat there with his hands folded and leaning his head against them. The fact that the infernal Ring of the Lucii was still missing was completely messing everything up. Once upon a time he had _felt_ it, especially once it passed into Lunafreya’s hands. He had known where she was at any given time as long as she carried the Ring of the Lucii; but after her unfortunate passing at the Altar of the Tidemother the ring had all but vanished from his vision. Noctis did not have it. No one had it – if they had, there would have been reports of someone dying via spontaneous combustion.

As long as this trinket remained missing nothing would happen. The world would continue its futile struggle against the dark as Ardyn sat upon a throne that should have been his all along.

That faint whimper Ignis let out as he lay there on the ground really only made this situation even more pathetic. The Immortal Accursed, unable to make the Infernian do as the prophecy demanded of them. And now he was stuck with a feverish mortal who looked like he was about to burst into tears as he continued his fitful sleep.

Ardyn only watched as Ignis suddenly jerked up and started struggling against the thin blanket Ardyn had pulled from a closet. Then, after a few seconds of watching how wild Ignis’ expression was, he realised something.

It took Ardyn a good amount of self-restraint to not call the Infernian something less than favourable as he gently put his hand on Ignis’ forehand.

“Shh.”

“Noct…?”

Ignis collapsed again a moment after that, a flash of recognition on his face. Ardyn definitely saw the fear and disgust before the advisor’s legs gave in.

* * *

The silence in this room could only be described as judging. Perhaps it was, with the hole in the wall that gave way to a good overview of a city in ruins, a city caught in the choking embrace of darkness as it waited for another to sit the throne. Waited for a final breath and the glorious sunrise in the wake of death, in the wake of the gods sweeping their mistakes under the rug and claiming that this was all planned.

They should have expected the mortals to eventually stage an uprising against the deities they once worshipped. It had not been a sudden decision that Solheim had made from one day to another – Ardyn would know. He, too, had slowly and steadily poisoned the thoughts of Niflheim over the last hundreds of years, leading them down a path almost without redemption. A path that culminated in the emperor feigning talks of peace only to murder the king of one of the oldest bloodlines of Eos for the gods-given Crystal and the Ring of the Lucii, a path that led to a researcher attempting to gain immortality through machinery and enough power to subjugate the remaining gods, perhaps even to sniff out their lives. Solheim had to have gone down a similar path.

Perhaps not led by the hand by the Immortal Accursed like Niflheim had been, but definitely manipulated over a long time. Many mistakes had been made, but the worst had been that of the Six who let the Astral War drag on and on until the land had been bled dry, until Bahamut himself tore a cleft into the earth as he defeated Ifrit. The ravaged planet had already been infected by that time, but the surge of the Scourge following the War of the Astrals had nearly condemned the planet.

Ardyn brought his foot down on the seat of the vacant throne.

That so small a nation could conquer an entire continent was still surprising. His brother and his relatives had definitely not been lazy, had not been content with having received blessings of the gods and a prophecy that meant their bloodline would be the one to save the entire planet. They had not idly rested until that time came and instead had gone to conquer the rest of the continent called Lucis. From one shore to the other; united like the other continents had not been for a long time. Accordo was many city states upon many islands, a trade agreement. A rough mixture of interests that stood together against the darkness now as if there hadn’t been almost violent disagreements over ports and ships in the past. Niflheim and Tenebrae never truly mixed together; and after the Oracle’s bloodline settled in Tenebrae’s forests and hills the country had declared that it had no interest to ally with its supposed mother nation. Even after reconquering the country they had left the Oracle’s home alone until Ardyn coaxed everyone into attacking because the Lucian king and prince were there, and the Ring of the Lucii in their direct reach for once. An opportunity that was not to be ignored.

Other than Galahd, most of Lucis was at least content with their rulership. Had been. Was again.

Ardyn traced the armrest of the throne after lifting his foot off it.

The Accursed had never had a place in this story. A usurper as the gods already called him, someone laying claim to a throne that was never his. Just another tool on the battlefield, the final piece on the Infernian’s side of the game. An imposter king, a phantom king – to oppose the true king on the other side.

If the wind still blew it would have blown into this giant hole. It would have made his clothes rustle just as they had whenever he had travelled and the breeze had gone over the plains. Just as they had when he sat down to teach his brother how to properly control the wind, a skill that soon got the boy the nickname that would be his moniker for all eternity; the Mystic. No record remained of the man they called the Healer, the Sage once they realised that he could do more than simply heal. Ardyn almost missed the wind.

Almost missed the sun.

Not that he had truly enjoyed it in the past 2,000 years. There was only so much having a body that was not immediately weak to light could do. It still hurt his eyes. It still made him sick if he stayed in it for too long – travelling a wasteland like Cartanica with no shade to be found for miles across the dusty steppe was akin to torture. He’d done it. Several times. Countless times. Passed out in the sun dehydrated and with millions of voices hissing around him in the unrelenting light of the sun. Felt nothing but cold for once. Swallowed dust and sand until the sun set and suddenly he felt the same as usual. The dull, throbbing pain. The fever. The unrelenting hatred that surged through him.

It was a far cry from the man who once enjoyed a rest underneath a tree every so often with no one but his Chocobo beside him. A very far cry from the young man who his brother usually had to frown at whenever there was an official visit and Ardyn of the Izunia family was once again napping in the sun, leaning against a tree, with that infernal bird of his clicking its beak angrily into Somnus’ general direction.

He shook his head angrily.

There was a time to reminisce. And the time for that had passed nearly two millennia ago.

Judging silence all aside, Ardyn finally brushed past the throne and went to the hole in the wall. Niflheim had been thorough in the demoralising destruction department at the very least. A hole like this was visible from almost all of Insomnia, and the people who had remained here for the longest time would never once forget that Niflheim had thoroughly and completely devastated this city, butchered the royal family as far as everyone knew, and that there was nothing to be done about the empire. They had won.

Ardyn still thought it somewhat distasteful, but that was what Emperor Aldercapt usually did.

The fact said emperor was currently haunting the streets of this city as a mindless Daemon while King Regis rested with the Lucii notwithstanding. Ardyn already knew whose purgatory after death was less godawful – Regis.

Nobody would remember the name Iedolas Aldercapt after a few generations.

Just as nobody remembered that the Mystic had had a brother the people generally called the Sage.

* * *

“I don’t… feel so well.”

He looked absolutely miserable. Pale, battered, exhausted. It had been nearly three years, but not even after a thorough thrashing did Ignis look this miserable, and Ardyn seethed.

“Unwell? You, and pray excuse the frank words, look like _shit.”_

Ignis swayed a little as he stood there, his grasp on the Trident of the Oracle surprisingly limp for once. Normally he clung to the weapon like his life depended on it – and it did, in a way. But those glassy eyes peeking out underneath the bangs of someone who barely managed to drag themselves out of bed made Ardyn’s eyes narrow.

“Then go back to bed.”

Much to his surprise, all Ignis muttered was a quiet “Of course, Your Majesty,” before dragging himself away.

* * *

Out of all people it had been this fun little duo. Ardyn only shook his head slightly when he heard the click of a gun and turned his head.

“Come now. I assume the man by your side already told you why this would be a waste of good ammunition, has he not?”

Ravus Nox Fleuret bristled in the dark, the hunter’s attire looking somewhat wrong on him. Then again, they were infinitely more useful than the bright white coat that made Ravus stand out like a sore thumb even in the dark.

Prompto Argentum lowered the gun. Ravus had told them about the Accursed’s part in the story, and how only Noctis could kill him at long last. He likely hadn’t told them that Noctis would have to die to complete the prophecy. Much like most people who knew about the full prophecy.

Then the boy raised the gun again. Once more a click ran through the dark, and Ardyn sighed.

“You would rather waste your ammunition, I take it?”

As an identical clone of Verstael Besithia, Ardyn had seen the similarities between the blonde pointing his gun at him and the researcher he had driven to a point where he wanted to become immortal and slay gods coming, but seeing it now was hilarious. The same crease in the eyebrows, the same freckles, the same expression of anger and disgust. It was like looking into an alternate reality; one where Besithia was a sharpshooter instead of a researcher, one where he paid attention to his looks and regularly went outside instead of the young man with messy blonde hair that fell just about everywhere. At least until it got long enough for him to pull most of it into a hurried ponytail before he slumped over his papers again.

His calmness seemed to irritate the blonde, however. The gun was shaking.

Then he steadied his stance once more.

“If I shoot you and you die, you’ll lose control over Ignis until you’re back. Probably. Can’t know until I try.”

Ardyn shook his head. “Dear me. Do you perhaps see your former friend around here anywhere? You cannot know until you see the person I allegedly am controlling.”

It was _hilarious_ that the boy believed he was controlling Ignis. Ravus raised a hand and Prompto finally lowered his gun. “Leave it. He’s not worth the trouble.”

“Oh, I’m _hurt._ We used to be on the same side, High Commander!”

There was that proud expression Ravus wore whenever he was absolutely certain of himself. It had become rather rare as soon as Insomnia had fallen and his sister had become a fugitive, but through the veil of grief and rage Ardyn had seen part of that pride as he approached the man at the Altar of the Tidemother. Just for a split second he had been proud that he had seen through the chancellor’s disguise while Ignis had not.

“Used to be. No more. Unfortunately you would be acting differently if you had the Ring of the Lucii and therefore are useless to our venture. Go back to where you crawled out from. … Come, Prompto.”

Ardyn let out a laugh. The proud son of Tenebrae the empire had considered killing until Ardyn pointed out that his rage was directed towards Lucis rather than Niflheim; thus they had made him a tool and he had complied oh so happily. The desire for revenge drove the boy, and Ardyn had had his fun feeding that flame of hatred. Nurtured it, even. Taught Ravus things.

Made certain he was coming down with the Scourge once Insomnia fell.

Lunafreya had not undone that. How delightfully _cruel_ of her. It had been the blessing of the Oracle that had freed Ravus from what would have inevitably killed him – though it made Ardyn wonder why the fair lady did not consider healing her brother when she had had the chance. Now she was dead and with her had gone the power to purify; Ardyn could no longer do it and Ravus had never had the ability to and would never gain it. Such was the way of the gods.

He was in a good mood and decided to let them go. Ravus was definitely strategically backing away, making certain he was moving sideways to keep an eye on Ardyn and all. Basic military training. And here Ardyn had thought that he would have had to scold Ravus to never turn his back on his enemies.

He let out a laugh of some sort again. “Oh, my dear Prompto?” He saw the blonde cringe and Ravus stop dead. “Perhaps next time make certain that everything is as you assume. Better to shoot the rabid dog before it starts biting back. Or rather; it is better to shoot a friend if you cannot ascertain whether he is on your side or not in case you run into him.”

That bullet through his forehead was worth seeing the unrelenting flash of anger across Besithia’s little clone’s face.

Almost felt like back in Niflheim.

He only laughed into the direction of whichever deity barred the gates from him this time and came back still laughing to the point he threw up black grime.

* * *

“You still don’t look so good.”

“Just a fever. Otherwise I’m _fine.”_ Ignis’ voice was cracking.

“Mhm.”

Ardyn turned a page of his book. This library was underground; stuffed to the brim with history and medicine as opposed to the upper floors which held the more forbidden literature as well as the usual royal literature. He quite frankly had no interest in reading about medicinal herbs that had died out since the fall of Solheim – looking at some of these only made him realise how long it had been. In fact he could have sworn it had been barely more than a few years since he made a pulp out of Vogliupean raspberry leaves and several other herbs to slather it on a wound to disinfect it.

Then again if those plants hadn’t died out before, the death of the Glacian in Ghorovas Rift would have killed them for certain. Unless they were a case not unlike the mountain tulip.

Which Ardyn doubted. The berries themselves were anything but made for consumption; no matter the medicinal value, there were other plants and chemical recreations that had the same effect nowadays.

Darkness would add a good amount of plants to these books. Once Noctis succeeded, naught more than a footnote in an underground library of the then dead Lucis Caelum family. He looked at the next page; a Tenebraen herb from the Ulwaat region, one he had watched vanish in favour of berry plantations. A herb that was used to reduce temperatures, one that he had used on his own travels. Only when this herb failed people realised that someone was likely coming down with the Scourge, and by then it usually was too late for the person in question.

Ignis sat on the floor, leaning against a bookshelf. His eyes were surprisingly bright for someone who claimed they had ‘just a fever’, and the book he had grabbed from the shelf was a simple retelling of Lucian history. Something he likely knew by heart as part of his studies anyway.

Ardyn had no idea when he started talking, or why. But at some point, after looking at yet another Lucian plant – a flower from the Cavaugh peninsula, called the Insomniac whistle, generally used as anaesthetic – he asked Ignis what he knew about the Scourge.

“Precious little, I’m afraid,” Ignis rasped from his place on the floor, “due to the Wall it was not that… prevalent within Insomnia. I only know that the Oracle can heal it.”

That was why they had taken Prince Noctis to Tenebrae is what went unsaid. Ardyn saw that comment on Ignis’ face, the way a shadow fell over his eyes. The Marilith had perhaps not been the best approach to the situation; Ardyn had quite literally opposed killing the prince to weaken the Lucian king because he somewhat feared that the gods would let their Chosen die and make him wait even longer. The fact that the unfortunate child awoke from a coma incapable of walking on his own had already infuriated Ardyn, but the fact that only a month later the wound on his back began festering with the Scourge made him seethe. Niflheim had grown bold indeed, but it all worked out in the end. The Chosen lived, regained his strength.

But the fact that he was a survivor of the Scourge all thanks to the Oracles never stopped being ironic. The family that had gained its power because the original healer had managed to get himself corrupted through his compassion.

“It is in fact _only_ the Oracle who can heal it. It is a death sentence otherwise.”

Ignis likely knew as much. Ardyn could feel the advisor’s eyes on him as he leaned back in the chair.

“Now, what did we do when there was no Oracle to stem the cases of people vanishing? Not much. People vanished. Those who remained moved on.”

It had been rather common. Someone would get sick, stay in bed. And one day they vanished, leaving no trace of them behind other than whatever clothes they had been wearing remaining on the ground somewhere. It had led to some people going as far as to discard all clothing when they got sick, even led to a bunch of Scourge-addled nutcases running around the Duscaen forests wearing absolutely nothing.

They all vanished in the end – nobles, local nutcases, the country’s most celebrated beauty, a farmer. The Scourge did not discriminate, just as Ifrit had not discriminated when the Astral War began. Mortal hubris had brought the sickness upon them and it remained a dreary reminder of what had been lost not too long ago.

“… And then someone with the power to heal it appeared,” Ignis whispered, “though what I learned was that the Founder King banished it hand in hand with the Oracle, stemmed the flow and locked it behind shut doors. Until it seeped out again.”

Ardyn snorted, an ugly sound that made the advisor cringe.

“If the end result is the person vanishing into thin air, do you really think people would document single cases?”

“Of course not.”

“People who go missing in the wilds and never return. Why do you think hunters wear dog tags? How many of those have you picked up with no body to be found nearby? No bone. No blood. Just shreds of clothing and the dog tags?”

Plenty, likely. Ardyn had somewhat tracked them across Lucis courtesy of the fact that tracking a production code was easy enough, even if the unit in question was not truly a MT. They had spent an ungodly amount of time out in the wilderness doing hunts and tracking down things for the hunters and other people of Lucis. Hardly tasks befitting a king, but definitely tasks that suited how Noctis had been raised. A compassionate person who was born to be on the death row.

“But they don’t… vanish.” There was a certain edge to Ignis’ voice as he said that, another dark expression on his face that Ardyn didn’t exactly know how to parse.

“Of course not. The general public would have dissolved into complete and utter anarchy if that news had gotten out somehow. Most people who saw someone turn into a Daemon were torn apart by the very Daemon spawned from that other person. Who knows how many knew in the end. Likely not that many – the Oracles of Tenebrae and their families notwithstanding.”

It was for the best, Somnus had said once he had learned what an infection eventually caused. Better to leave the people in the dark than tell them the horrifying truth behind the Scourge; a motto that eventually became the very sentence he had muttered after driving a knife into Ardyn’s back likely knowing full well that it wouldn’t kill his brother. It was better to let the people believe that this horrible creature looking like their beloved healer was banished and dying from a knife in the back than telling them it was still Ardyn, the same Ardyn who had travelled Eos selflessly to heal every single person he came across. Better to let them believe the evil had been banished for now and that the new king and the Oracle would do their very best to do what the Sage promised them.

Many others across those two millennia had actually sealed dangers away. Ignis had seen what the kings and queens of Lucis and the Oracles of Tenebrae had left for the Chosen. Creatures that had gone on a rampage that proved too strong for an entire royal party plus king and Oracle. Daemons that were so hideous and strong that they only managed to seal the exit and hope it would not escape until the Chosen came to either purify the land or someone grew strong enough to defeat them in a proper fight.

Ardyn had watched these little ventures into old Solheim dungeons and caves specifically created to hold ancient horrors. All those creatures, even the ones that had not been Daemons before, had slowly given into the Scourge. They were even stronger after hundreds of years of rest behind barred doors.

Four men and the power of the kings of old. More blood and sweat and sheer agony than anyone else could ever believe, and none would ever hear this story unless Gladiolus and Prompto decided to talk about their travels with the King of Light once that man passed away.

“The most interesting thing is how despair begets the Scourge of Stars. Blighted earth does not pop up without warning – you have to salt the ground, first.”

Ignis coughed slightly. “Is that what you have been doing?”

“Occasionally.”

Truth be told, he only really manipulated Niflheim to do as he needed it to. Other countries had barely been touched by the Accursed, and it had been Niflheim that had fallen first after Ardyn started a chain reaction with Lunafreya’s death. There was absolutely no need to take care of the earth itself; that happened all by itself and if it didn’t there were more than enough Daemons to take care of it in his stead.

“Though I suppose sowing despair works about as well as corroding the earth. Those who lose hope fall first in the event of an infection.”

It was always hope that kept people going. Hope that had made the Lucii reach out to people – hope that had made the three he had since gotten under his control rage against his stranglehold so much. Though Somnus did not rage as hard as the other two did.

Ah, the bonds of family.

Ardyn hated them.

Ignis closed his book and breathed in slowly.

“But there is no cure.”

“Why should there be? It is only the Oracle who can heal – and the Oracle is dead. Unfortunately she did not have a daughter she could teach her arts, and her brother does not have a daughter either whom the gods could teach. Male Oracles? Are you _mad?_ After what happened _last time?”_

Ignis furrowed his brows. He looked like someone had said something to him, but Ardyn couldn’t care less. It likely were whatever spirits had attached themselves to him that had offended him like that.

“As long as even just the tiniest remainder of hope lingers, the Scourge cannot fully corrupt a body. You could _die_ and the Scourge could reanimate your body, but still you would retain some shred of humanity. Speaking Daemons that act purely on instinct. All those local legends and creatures that only take place or appear at night are Daemons that still carry hope, somewhat. Whether they hunt beside the Vesperpool hoping that one of the men they lure in is their friend, or whether they are snake women who steal children, until they get sealed and wallow in misery much later… doesn’t matter. Those people had hope when they died infected – and they continue carrying that hope, somehow. It allows them to speak.”

That look of horror on Ignis’ face was nothing short of hilarious.

* * *

“Come again to make certain I don’t move until those freaks with the blessing get away?”

This time she looked like the High Messenger, and her eyes were open for once. There was an expression that Ardyn hadn’t seen in years on her face, even as he sat on top of that boulder.

“No.”

He hadn’t planned on putting as much as a finger on these people. Ignis was under the strict orders to let all of them live; all Ardyn wanted to see was whether they could fight or not. A wide array of blessings, all separated by Daemons of extraordinary strength and stamina. Somewhere in the middle of that, Ignis and Noctis – not together, not fighting against each other. Ardyn was fairly certain that Ignis was about to meet one blessing in particular that made him almost giddy with anticipation.

And then Shiva had appeared to once more ruin his fun.

“Well then, get lost, goddess of ice. You as local deity of unhelpfulness ought to know that nothing bad will happen here. This is merely a test of strength.”

She tilted her head a little.

“So he claims, having walked o’er blighted soil and broken hearts for his own morbid amusement.”

Ardyn sat up straighter. “Pardon?”

“Things are without the reach of gods and those burdened with a prophecy. It is those who do not have that burden upon them that can change the course of history, through defiance, hope. Despair.”

He turned his head back to the vast reach of Cleigne ground that those people had covered after Ardyn had deliberately made certain that some outlook caught sight of him and Ignis. The advisor himself was back to being the same as he had been before their trip to the Rock of Ravatogh which was concerning in its own way.

He narrowed his eyes and looked at Shiva – Gentiana. The same infuriating woman as she always was, and her calm had for once been washed away.

She was _concerned._

“A choice cannot be undone. We do not have the power to force mortals to do as history as it ought to be requires. A muddled mind clinging onto a desperate hope, with the rising voices of darkness at their side… can throw history off its course. It is then that we will have to interfere to bring history back to its proper course.”

He was staring at her. Those words made precious little sense at first but as she remained silent he thought about it.

“… So it was all _planned?”_ He choked those words out, both seething rage and utter hopelessness searing through his veins at once. “You planned all along to have my brother cast me out and--”

“No. Mortal choices that cannot be undone brought you upon your path. We had to fix what went wrong, had to plan something else as madness consumed you. A prophecy is a reaction to mortal choices, for we meddle not unless the planet itself is at stake. Rotted soil, blighted earth… we had never planned on this. Or… this.”

Ardyn turned back to the battlefield. A handful people, all divided by Daemons. They would be winning once he told the Daemons to stop playing it defensive, and Ignis was to observe and not to approach.

For once he felt his own heart skip a beat. It hadn’t beaten in so long.

_Why on earth was he so giddy about Ignis clashing with one of these people?_

“So realisation sets in. It is out of our hands.”

He jumped to his feet.

“But not out of mine.”

“You will be too late, Accursed.”

“Only because you keep on talking to me!”

“I need you to _listen_ , Sage.”

He had been about to start running, but he stopped dead when he hard that old nickname of his. It had been so very long that it made his entire body revolt. Gentiana walked up next to him, put a hand on his shoulder. Her eyes were so empty and dead, the concern gone as if she had never once felt a thing. Like ice untouched for centuries, a glacier that never once moved.

“You walked on despite the warnings given to you. Now it is out of your hands; it will not go the way you want it to. Whether one dies, another dies… or you lose your heartbroken plaything… it is in the hands of fate now.”

“… Aren’t you gods supposed to be the hands of fate?”

Shiva shook her head.

“We but do as destiny beckons.” She removed her hand and Ardyn saw the blessings flare up ahead. It made his eyes water. “For even the undying have their destinies; little measurements of time for those who cannot age. It was my beloved’s destiny to be betrayed. It was mine to fall at the hands of the army you raised. It is us who will rise before the dawn. For dawn is the final strike of the clock. Only then does destiny release us, and we in turn release the mortals. Had you brought dawn, then it would have been so. But mortals are fragile. Derail history and you derail their hope. Their drive.”

A deep sigh; silence like a morning with snow freshly fallen.

Once more the blessings flared. Only now he realised that the strange aura that Ignis had been emanating lately had not been fever – it had been the power of one such blessing bleeding out of him, like a barrel full of water; a barrel filled to the brim with an almost explosive mixture of darkness and light.

Then they flickered.

Ardyn threw a last glance at the goddess of ice in her Messenger’s body before shaking his head.

“A fine mess you’ve made of things.”

“You yourself are not innocent of this crime.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

And with that he bolted. Towards that sickly beacon of whatever it was that was Ignis’ power and that other blessing he was currently clearly engaged with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'll repeat that next chapter, but. it's russian choice roulette. aka next chapter is the escalation point i alluded to recently. what way does it escalate into? well,
> 
> (susano ffxiv voice) now cometh our part, make way, make way


	23. You and your former ally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS IS THE ESCALATION POINT  
> turn back if you want this fic to have a happy ending of some kind, because that's getting thoroughly trashed with what's revealed and done here.
> 
> that being said.  
> a special shoutout to everyone who's been commenting on every chapter so far! you guys are... really motivating, to say the least. thank you!! id dedicate this chapter to someone but that would be, uh, yeah.  
> (shoutout to Mariyekos. you did get it right in your thoughts in the comments you left on HAUNT. and then said that it likely wasn't that.)
> 
> anyway enough out of me!

Something was making King Regis’ voice grow more and more silent. It also distorted it into rather funny-sounding high-pitched murmurs or a rumble so deep that Ignis barely understood it.

It was the fever wrecking his body, most likely. He was barely coherent, kept tossing and turning and had no way of escaping this godawful experience. It felt like he was still standing on the Rock of Ravatogh with nothing but what looked like a thin layer of crystalline glass keeping him from going up in flames. Whenever it ebbed away Ignis realised he had _moved_ almost entirely on his own, likely in a fever-driven stupor.

Even _Ardyn_ commented on it. That had to be a new low. After he dragged himself back to the bed he had crawled from in a desperate attempt to catch some fresh air, he stopped at the window. Somewhere in the distance, Lestallum.

Gods he wanted to _leave._ Finally give in to that ridiculous claim that King Regis and Lunafreya repeated, run away with the Ring of the Lucii and beg for forgiveness.

Forgiveness that Noctis would give him. He staggered away from the window as if someone had slapped him, the fever leaving him gasping for breath.

No, he wasn’t gasping for breath.

He was just crying. Again. This was starting to get ridiculous.

“Pull yourself together, Scientia,” he growled at himself before falling back into bed. This constant feeling sorry for himself needed to stop. Otherwise he might just claw his own eyes out at this rate.

* * *

His fingers were cold and clammy despite the fact he was still feverish. But by now he had regained control over most of his senses and his body; he needed to regain his ability to fight as soon as possible just in case Ardyn decided he had had enough of this mutual game of charade they were playing. There was absolutely no tiptoeing around the Garula in the room; Ardyn knew that Ignis had ulterior moves and Ignis was planning on betraying him as soon as possible. Just in case he decided to run with his tail between his legs he needed to be ready to fight his way out – and even if he simply killed Ardyn over and over until he reached Lestallum or someone else found him and helped him escape.

Right now he could barely hold his weapons, which left him strangely vulnerable as he watched the Daemons in the street skitter around. He had no idea where Ardyn had gone off to, and King Regis’ voice was beyond corrupted, a deep rumble that he couldn’t make sense of right now. It was intrusive, it made his head hurt – just like Lunafreya’s had before he had realised who it had been who had kept making him see those horrible visions.

Ignis closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

He’d spent a fair amount of time analysing what he had seen and heard Ardyn talk about while Ignis had taught the man how to properly assemble a golem capable of fighting. He’d felt like one of the men who had helped build the Old Wall despite the fact he had done it to learn more about the man he was spending his time with now. He slowly reached for his necklace; one of the few remnants of an old life he could still return to if the voices of Lunafreya and King Regis were to be believed before they vanished or became completely incomprehensible. That sigil…

He had picked it up and never looked at it again, but he slowly removed it from its resting place. It was warm in his cold hands, warmer than it should have been. The world wavered about, like ripples across the surface of water, and Ignis took a deep breath.

All other people who had obtained something like this had had something about their fighting styles improve, often complementing their original style. Others had learned new things – the most prominent example and one that Ardyn often invoked was how hilariously infuriating seeing Ravus knit torn flesh back together as if it was nothing was. Blood of the Oracle, with the blessing of the Lucian king the people had called Oracle until the true Fleuret children were old enough to learn from the High Messenger. A man who did not have the ability to heal the Scourge – otherwise he would have likely gone down the same path as Ardyn had. There was a reason only the Oracles could heal, there was a reason why most of these women died so horribly young.

He’d heard stories about a new edge to Aranea’s jumps, heard about Monica slinging out spell after spell without entering stasis that quickly any longer. Had heard of the sudden increase in sheer brute force whenever that Niff Tummelt attacked.

Blessings, and according to Ardyn they had all carried these things. The woman who had fought with the ferocity of a hundred furious Chocobo mothers thanks to the blessing of the Rogue; the man who had shattered Iron Giants as if they were made of putty and who had managed to crush half of Ardyn’s skull with barely more than a missed swing because by his side stood the Fierce.

How things were drawn in, as if gravity itself shifted, as if a strong wind was pushing them into the same direction because the Mystic had stood beside…

Now that he thought about it, Ignis had no idea who had had the Mystic’s blessing. There was absolutely no way to deny that that person was dead; as Prompto would have put it “deader than dead” simply because they had had Ardyn’s brother by their side.

He shook his head and closed his fist around the sigil that he had picked up from the floor in the Citadel.

Ardyn had taken these things and that was the reason he was capable of invoking several things that only access to the Crystal allowed.

He’d watched it, even with his fever making him doubt whether it was happening or not. He’d seen how Ardyn’s weapons normally manifested compared to Noctis’.

The loud shattering of glass was something that sounded different between those two. Ardyn’s was sharper, and he always moved his hands somehow. They were, after all, illusions made manifest with the exception of that horrid scythe that Ignis had only seen a handful times. Normally Ardyn manifested it larger than it actually was, but after a while Ignis realised there was something at the base of that weapon. A darker colour, something that told the truth. That this was not an actual Armiger weapon; something that carried over to all other ‘Armiger’ weapons Ardyn summoned. A slight discolouration. That was all that told him which weapons were illusory, and the scythe itself was no exception. This was the weapon Ardyn had used when he had been alive, just as King Regis had used his sword, just how the Rogue had used her shuriken, and so on. This could have become a royal arm if Ardyn had been a king instead of the Accursed.

He usually used it for its sheer might, larger than the original was.

Ignis had seen it that day sometime after they returned from the Rock of Ravatogh. He’d heard the splinter of glass, softer this time. Ardyn had not moved his hands somehow – the man had been standing perfectly still; in one hand he was holding the three sigils he had murdered people for.

In the other he was holding a sword now, a familiar blade that Ignis had seen quite a few times in Noctis’ hands. The Sword of the Mystic, perfectly crystalline and reddish, like a beacon of light in the darkness.

He saw how Ardyn dismissed that weapon. No sounds of shattering glass, no sudden waver in the magic energy.

That was a royal arm.

Ardyn had summoned part of an Armiger.

An actual Armiger rather than the illusory weapons he relied on normally.

He slowly uncurled his fist. The sigil looked so unassuming; barely more than something slightly tacky that one would find on good luck charms and other accessories. Those things were giving Ardyn the power to summon actual Armiger weapons instead of relying on illusions… Those things were giving normal people powers they normally did not have.

Technically this one should do the same, but Ignis had no idea if it did. He had never tried using it, he had no idea what it normally did. Lunafreya had broken some boundaries and given people the ability to heal minor to major wounds, it had given her brother the ability to knit bones and flesh together and defy impending injury-related death as if it was nothing. But all those people were connected to the Crystal and Noctis somehow. Ignis… wasn’t.

What on earth would this thing even do?

He attempted to focus on it for a split second. He felt a spark of magic, heard a deep rumble that definitely came from King Regis saying something. Even through that horrid veil of static and nonsense Ignis heard how surprised King Regis was. Then the spark of magic vanished, and he was left sinking to the ground suddenly drained of all energy.

“What… the hell…?”

He barely even noticed that the Daemons all around him seemed to jump around with even more vigour than before. All he felt was how cold the asphalt was against his cheeks, how bad his head hurt, and how deliriously disoriented he was all of a sudden.

* * *

He awoke coughing, spitting blood on his hands.

That was far from ideal. Far, far from ideal. He ignored the fact that his fever was back despite having finally gotten better. Almost in a panicked stupor he wiped the blood off and turned around in bed.

When he woke again he felt the same as he had when he had gone to bed, the five minutes of consciousness in the middle of his sleep long since forgotten. It had just been a nightmare, he had so many of these lately. All the same, all with him coughing, writhing, with darkness edging ever closer.

The tissue under the bed lay forgotten.

* * *

The plan was… simple enough. Ardyn wanted to see how strong they were, and Ignis would not stand still and wait while his former companions all fought for their lives – or so they assumed.

“Relax! They’re pawns that still have a use; discarding or killing a tool that still has its uses is not only wasteful but also extraordinarily stupid.”

The fact that Ardyn was still staring right at him with a smile akin to that of a predator about to pounce on its prey did not make Ignis’ headache better. Thus he stalked off, made certain that everyone was still in one piece and not losing their fight.

He deliberately avoided getting too close to any of them, edging around the battlefield and occasionally throwing glances into some directions. He’d seen Prompto almost effortlessly bouncing around the battlefield and his bullets were hitting all their targets. He’d used to miss on occasion even while focus, but right now he was more accurate than Ignis had ever seen him. Gladio’s brute force was more refined now, years of darkness honing skills that he would have never gained otherwise. He even caught a glimpse of Noctis before the king of Lucis vanished in a burst of sparks. Nothing but a blue image of him remained, which faded a few moments later, and Ignis forced himself to slink back out and around and as far away from that as possible.

He knew, the second he looked Noctis in the face his resolve would finally break. It had been so very shaky for the last few weeks. He wanted nothing more than to call out and make all those people see him. For a moment he saw a blast of light from where Ravus was fighting.

A horrendous hissing split through the sound of distant fighting, and he had to stop. That was new. The light burned in his eyes – as expected, for someone who spent most of his time in utter darkness. He’d only watched Lestallum from afar and hadn’t really had seen actual light, magic or not, in what felt like ages.

The hissing didn’t make his head hurt, however. He had to cover his eyes and the hissing stopped nearly immediately.

This definitely was not King Regis attempting to talk to Ignis. The man had been utterly silent in the last few days. Besides, his voice no longer was a voice anyway. Even in his visions the distorted voices of the gods and Lunafreya had been understandable to a degree until he had gone to Insomnia. King Regis had been understandable from the very beginning and had deteriorated… but why?

Ravatogh.

Another blast of light, still in the distance. This time it felt different and it was Ignis who let out a hiss when he covered his eyes. Who was fighting over there again? Prompto was the one closest to where Ardyn began; he did not use his Starshell bullets unless there was a group of Daemons that he could stop in their tracks with it, and usually only when he was fighting together with other people. Simple strategy. Gladiolus did not use magic. Noctis was a thunder aficionado; thunder magic looked different. It also did not look like this. He had precious little idea who the others with a blessing around here were, but he assumed that there at least was Monica in the field as well, and likely Aranea somewhere on the outer edges, fighting a half-Daemon bird of some sort. Iris, but he had avoided finding her.

So… who was that up ahead again?

His brain was trying to find a solution, but he started moving. As long as it were none of his former friends or the Crownsguard he’d be fine. The hissing noise accompanied him, and a deep rumble he did not understand joined it. But the way the rumble sounded it was clear that King Regis was trying to say something like “turn back”; it only made Ignis walk faster.

Another flash of light, and he heard the distant groan of a Daemon falling over. He saw the glint of drawn steel in the light, though it still blinded him.

“No, wait...”

That wasn’t just drawn steel. That was a sword in one hand, but the other also reflected the light… which could only mean one thing.

Ravus Nox Fleuret.

Brother of the late Oracle Lunafreya, last survivor of the Fleuret family. High Commander of the Niflheim army, currently the de facto leader of the country at large. Dethroned crown prince of Tenebrae, the only living member of its royal family. A beacon of hope just as Noctis Lucis Caelum was, but more for the people who had done wrong and were living in the darkness now instead of many of the good people who had perished on their way to safety. Someone who showed that in the darkness sins could be forgiven, someone who supported the King of Light in absence of the Marshal and the Oracle.

The very man Ignis had fought together in Altissia, that accursed city that held nothing but horrible memories and a city that had uncovered truths that had better remained buried.

Not someone Ignis hated when he thought rationally. Just as he had never really hated Cor.

But right now all he felt was seething anger, scathingly hot just like his bouts of fever had been. He watched as Ravus won his fight, saw the shadows around the battlefield move. Ardyn had several Daemons around and ready to pounce – but the command never came. Whatever the hell Ardyn was doing, Ignis had no idea.

The Accursed had said that he wanted to keep them busy for a while before he would let them off the hook. But the Daemons did not move, clearly still waiting for the command.

Ignis told them to stay and stepped forwards.

Ardyn and Ignis had made a point in being seen before this ambush separated all the people from Lestallum. After all, they all still clung to the belief that Ardyn was controlling Ignis. The man had nearly laughed himself into oblivion when he returned from a venture outside one day, dried blood on his face. He’d gotten himself shot by Prompto and he had joked about his spell on Ignis fading for a while, then he had shoved his hand into Ignis face.

“And now you’re under my control again. Boo hoo.”

It was an odd reversal of their rules. Ravus was fully aware that he was surrounded by Daemons. His eyes flicked from one side to another before he caught sight of Ignis; then he stopped. Ignis was moving forwards slowly, just as Ravus had been back in Altissia. He almost lamented the fact there was no corpse of Caligo Ulldor to step over, but alas, this Daemon slowly fading away had to do the trick.

“Ignis.”

He was still holding onto his sword, still the same from Altissia, the one given to him by Emperor Aldercapt. Then Ravus’ eyes flicked up and widened – he saw the weapon Ignis carried around. He made a point in removing it slowly, the Trident of the Oracle heavy in his hands. A familiar weight, much like his daggers had been back then. Three years. It had been just a little less than three years since that awful day in Altissia. Since that time that Ignis, surrounded by soldiers and MTs was approached by Ravus, who offered him an alliance until they got to Noctis and Lunafreya at the Altar of the Tidemother.

Ignis almost lamented the fact that there were no Daemons immediately around Ravus that he could attack. It would have perfected this odd little replica of how they had formed their alliance. Alas, nothing of the sort offered itself and Ignis stopped a fair distance away from Ravus.

He almost bowed.

He stopped himself, suddenly very aware of how this situation was eerily similar to how Cor had eventually died. Ignis threw a glance over his shoulder, more nervously than he would have liked. Ardyn hadn’t moved. He was aware of where the man was, a skill he had somehow acquired after Ravatogh.

Ravus meanwhile narrowed his eyes. Ignis then turned his head back to him and threw him a smile. Not a nice one, not a friendly one. The cold smile of one politician to another, something that Ignis had taught himself after seeing King Regis and Clarus and his uncle do the same a lot.

The silence in this place was absolute. Even just a breath was louder than anything else, and he saw that Ravus was focusing on something.

Then the prince of Tenebrae’s eyes widened a little.

“Good gods… What _happened_ to you?”

Ignis had absolutely no idea what he meant. “A scar here and there really is not something that would warrant a reaction like this. I do admit, your prosthetic caught my interest back then in Altissia, but--”

“Heavens above, you have no idea, do you?”

Ravus’ expression was one of honest shock. Someone who had been expecting something and gotten something else entirely. Cor at least seemed to have been expecting Ignis back then, but Ravus right now wore… he wore his expression very obviously. It was a far cry from the man who remained stoic until his determination was washed away in the wake of his sister’s death, only to be replaced by rage and then nothing but a grief so bottomless it had made Ignis stop and realise how blessed he had been that Noctis was alive. He had expected Ravus to go back to being stoic, considering how the man had barely reacted to Ignis in Gralea.

The fact he looked so shocked made Ignis shift uncomfortably. He had come here for a reason he didn’t remember, and now this man he had once fought beside was staring at him like that.

Still, determination to rage against the gods or not, Ignis fastened his grip on the Trident of the Oracle uncomfortably.

“I know a great many things.”

Cor had immediately commented on Ignis not being nearly as controlled as Iris had assumed. Ignis had thought that Ravus would react in a similar way, given how Ravus had somehow taken that empty place that Marshal Leonis had left – the two men were alike enough in some regards. Battle-hardened, stoic, quiet and usually not people to talk about their feelings or letting their emotions get the better of them except for a very few prominent outbursts.

Ravus blinked. “Knowing things or not, you…” He ran his metal hand through his hair. “Good grief this is… this is worse than I expected.”

“Worse,” Ignis snarled, “than what you expected? And what on earth does that mean?”

They stood there, the shadows around them still shifting and waiting for a command that never came. Ignis’ eyes flicked to the side and they all stopped, quivering lightly. A shudder went through the darkness; the silence on the former battlefield still not interrupted by anything but his own rather annoyingly loud heartbeat and Ravus shifting his weight from one foot to the other as he thought of what to say next.

Instead of saying anything, Ravus raised his weapon. Ignis reacted and did the same a few moments later, his confusion just as apparent as Ravus’ surprise still was.

But Ravus never lunged. Instead he moved his metal arm slightly, and a moment later light flooded the area around Ignis. The advisor hissed, desperately trying to cover his eyes to get the static sound out of his ears – it was disorienting, and that was about the last thing he needed right now.

“Light sensitivity.”

Ignis dropped his hands as soon as the light vanished. “We live in perpetual darkness, idiot! Of course I’m sensitive to light!”

“Out of character irritability.”

Ignis grunted. Ravus was fiddling around with his sword. They both moved at the same time and lunged forwards, their weapons clashing against each other and both of them stumbling backwards and away from one another from the impact. Before Ignis managed to regain his balance Ravus had moved again, tossed his sword from his flesh hand to the metal hand and moved in. It was barely more than a jab to the shoulder, not meant to be injuring at all. The fact that he used his free hand to shove Ignis lightly only made his intentions of not harming him clearer. He merely took another step backwards as he watched Ravus bounce back to his previous position and how he switched his sword back into his remaining hand.

“Feverishly warm skin; related to an increase in core body temperature.” Ravus’ expression was dire. “Sluggishness related to mental fatigue.”

Ignis did not have the time to bring his weapon up to defend himself. He felt the sword slice across the back of his nose, but Ravus once more was out of reach when Ignis managed to react.

“… Hmm.” The High Commander narrowed his eyes and watched a drop of blood run down Ignis’ face. “Slight discolouration; an almost rusty tint to the blood.”

The man’s almost worried expression was infuriating. It made Ignis’ blood boil - ‘out of character irritability’, the deep rumble that was King Regis seemed to say – and he shook his head. He needed to focus; he was not fatigued or sluggish at all.

“No hardening and discoloured skin. No reflective eyes. No respiratory issues, no arguing with voices…”

Ignis finally realised what Ravus was doing. He was reciting symptoms like a doctor.

“What are you even--”

“An early onset of,” Ravus exhaled slowly before finishing that sentence, “Starscourge. Whether Ardyn controls you or not – _irrelevant._ Before long he will own you flesh and soul, as Accursed and those who succumbed to the Scourge are like to do.”

And finally Ignis shook his head.

“He’s not controlling me.”

“I had figured as much when you approached me. But it is undeniable that you are _not_ right in the head, Ignis Scientia. Most early onsets of Scourge are far from sane people. … Most victims of it are not.”

His blood was roaring in his ears as he moved. He tried to ignore the images his mind conjured up, the muffled words of his mother as she nearly crushed him to death. That _Prince_ Noctis was lying. How unnaturally she had bent, how scathingly hot her skin had been to the touch. How equally warm Ardyn was whenever he shoved Ignis around, how all of a sudden Ardyn felt _cold_ to the touch.

He heard the roar of flame, the roar of the Infernian and the grumble of the Accursed. For a split second he saw fire, saw himself sinking to the ground.

But Ignis was not on top of Ravatogh; the Infernian had once more sunken beneath the mountain to wait for his true awakening at Ardyn’s hands.

“… Nevertheless, I’m afraid I will have to take you with me; infected or not. It is high time to go back where you belong.”

“So said Iris,” Ignis rasped as he brought the Trident of the Oracle into fighting position, “so said the Marshal before… my inaction killed him. So said my mother as she _turned before my eyes._ So said your sister, said King Regis.” At least invoking the late Oracle seemed to get a reaction from her elder brother; he winced. “Well, I’m sick of being _told_ what to do. Sick of being told to go somewhere just so these oh so _benevolent_ gods can make a _sacrifice_ out of Noctis. No more. No more! I’m not going _anywhere.”_

“Staying with the Accursed has already ruined you, I see.” A sigh. “Very well.”

Ravus’ movements were that of a trained warrior, and Ignis answered him. A formal Niff greeting before a mock fight.

But neither Ravus nor Ignis were intending on making this a mock fight.

“The least I ought to do is send you to the other side with what remains of your dignity. Such is my duty as blood of the Oracle.”

“You can try!”

* * *

The Trident of the Oracle went flying out of his hands. Ignis hurriedly dodged to the side, drawing his daggers in the same motion. There was no time to grab the trident now, and all things considered it was the weapon he usually relied upon when he needed to jump around or needed to parry a large weapon. Ravus’ weapon was far from comparable to Ardyn’s scythe – and Ignis knew he could defeat Ravus with a relentless assault while relying on his daggers. He had done it before, with strained muscles and throbbing bruises, with what amounted to a broken rib and a feeling so gut-wrenching that it must have been despair now that he thought about it.

He could always run, too.

But something prevented him from turning around and running just as he had with Iris. He wasn’t petrified like he had been when Ardyn started tormenting Cor either.

“ _An early onset of Scourge,”_ the king in the back of his mind whispered, his voice suddenly clear as if he had never sounded like he’d spoken into a broken megaphone that garbled his words into incomprehensible nonsense. Ignis only shook his head; he was _not_ going to argue with King Regis now when there were more pressing matters to attend to.

Said pressing matter sent a blast of light forwards that felt like the unrelenting sun in Cleigne, like the choking heat in Lestallum. Ignis had seen it coming this time and shielded his eyes enough to not immediately get blinded, but not enough that he could not see Ravus lunging forward.

He parried with both his daggers, a grunt escaping both of them as they locked their weapons together. They weren’t exhausted from fighting their way through Altissia together, they were not half mad with grief – this time it was Ravus against Ignis without any of these factors in the equation; it was raw strength against raw strength. Technically a direct comparison that Ravus should have won easily. But he didn’t.

Neither of them budged, and Ignis cracked a confused grin. “Ah? Have you grown weaker, perhaps?”

It wasn’t very likely. No, the more likely explanation was that Ardyn’s merciless training had paid off in the end, even if Ignis still could not defeat that man by himself. Ravus said nothing and instead stepped backwards, once more winding up for a spell.

Ignis decided to retaliate in kind; but for some reason his magic refused to answer him properly. For a few heartbeats they both stood there staring at one another, until Ravus opened his mouth.

Then he staggered backwards.

“What on...” He put his prosthetic hand on his face and stared at Ignis through his fingers. “What the _hell!?”_

Waves of nausea washed over Ignis, but he once more felt the Daemons in the shadows quiver. Not from anticipation this time, not because they were still waiting for an order – they were quivering because they felt invigorated.

“Whose blessing is that!?”

“A reverse Oracle, clearly.”

“Don’t mock me! Whose blessing, Scientia!?”

It was rather clear that Ravus was going down a mental list of who had which blessing out of the people he knew in Lestallum. Ignis rushed forwards, and Ravus parried every blow as he thought. But he was slower now, as if something had drained him of his energy.

“Good _grief.”_ Apparently Ravus had reached the end of the list only to realise that every blessing had been taken, and thus he had to think about what was in Insomnia. “King Regis. And twisted beyond words.”

Ignis stopped. “Eh?”

“So that is what happens if you mix the powers of the Lucii with the powers of the Accursed. A power twisted to do something else entirely.”

He understood what Ravus meant. Everyone used the blessings against the Daemons to weaken the Accursed or to protect themselves. They never used it against humans – but since Ignis was with the Accursed, King Regis’ unfortunate little gift meant that it worked against humans and in favour of Daemons. Just like how Ardyn’s powers had twisted until he used dark over light; Ignis had no idea if Ardyn was still capable of healing but everything else had corroded over time and left him with the Daemonic equivalent of the magic he had once used.

And now King Regis’ blessing had reversed as well.

Were this any other situation, he would have laughed. Loudly. But Ravus did not give him a second to do so, and Ignis barely managed to parry that blow.

“What on earth do you with to _achieve?_ You’ve doomed yourself, and for what? So what the gods have preordained does not come to pass?”

He shoved Ravus off. “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same for your sister if you had had the chance!”

That struck a nerve. Ravus’ expression deteriorated from determination to anger and grief, and Ignis felt himself lose footing. He stepped backwards a few times to avoid Ravus shoving him to the ground, and the High Commander remained where he stood. His sword hand was shaking.

“Gladly I would have, but was that what she really wanted? What she wanted was to stand beside the Chosen, bring light back to Eos and grant all those tortured souls peace; not have me slaughter allies and foes alike just for a chance to have her live with the weight of what my love for her made me do! … Which I realised way too late. Ardyn is quite apt at manipulating people – and you are being manipulated, whether you believe it or not. The Scourge dulls your sense of judgement. Come to your senses, Ignis! Spend what time remains with those you love instead of toiling under a man you loathe!”

“Not if the end result is the same! I won’t let them have him!”

He lunged forward with a yell, ignored King Regis’ sharp command to _stop this nonsense,_ and instead unleashed a flurry of attacks that he hadn’t used in a while. A trail of green flame followed him, licked against Ravus face as he attempted to regain his footing after this sudden and relentless assault.

Much like the fight against the Blademaster it ended with the dagger Ardyn had given him shoved into his opponent’s shoulder, and his opponent’s sword shoved through his. Ravus and Ignis stood there almost face to face.

Gods, he realised how cold Ravus was. It was almost aggravating how refreshingly _cold_ Ravus’ entire body was – perhaps the man did have a point. Perhaps Ignis had caught the Scourge and his body temperature had risen from it.

But that couldn’t be.

It absolutely couldn’t be.

And even if it had happened, Ardyn had told him that only those who lost their hope turned faster than those that still had hope.

He shoved Ravus away; the dagger and the sword ripping out of the shoulders they had been buried in. He barely felt the pain; it was not like back when he had returned to Insomnia after shoving the Blademaster down a cliff. Ravus on the other hand clutched his shoulder with a hiss of pain. Bright red was staining the brilliant white of his coat.

Ignis licked his dry lips. He was hearing some sort of hissing noise again, mixed together with a blurred nonsense that was clearly King Regis saying something.

“Ignis.”

He only grunted.

“We fought together once. For the same thing.” Ravus’ voice was strangely strained – he was likely about to heal himself. “We… defied the odds, I suppose. I would ask of you – come with me. Use what time remains of your life constructively; help Noctis rather than cause him nightmares. Perhaps he can save you before you… lose your humanity. And even then--”

“Am I some rabid dog to be put down?”

“… No. But most people who--”

“Ha! Listen to yourself talk, high and mighty blood of the Oracle! Offering solace to a _madman_ who can use _his remaining time_ in a _constructive way_ rather than… Oh, I don’t know. Failing to shove the Accursed off the Marshal? Hearing his last words get _interrupted_ by the trident shoved through his heart? Watching _my own mother_ lose her mind and hear her turn and cry out in agony behind me? You know _nothing_ of what I went through in the last three years! A Scourge infection is the _least_ of my problems now, whether I truly have it or not!”

He had no idea why the words were pouring out of him. He was rather certain that there were tears accompanying these words he spat into Ravus’ face, but the High Commander’s expression did not change. It only made Ignis more furious; the fact that this man could listen to all this pathetic nonsense he had gone through and not at least feel _pity._ Not that Ignis wanted to be pitied.

But that stoic refusal to show any sort of emotion only made him angrier than he was.

Ravus was telling him to give up and spend his last days knowing that Noctis would die too. Ravus of all people should have understood why he _couldn’t_ let anything of the sort happen; after all they had fought their way through Altissia together. Ravus had seen his conviction, his devotion to a promise he made when he was just a child meeting another child for the first time. His mad mantra. The only thing that mattered.

Keeping Noctis safe.

And the prophecy was the thing that was threatening him. The High Commander should have _understood_ that. But he didn’t and instead of even just pitying Ignis he likely thought nothing. Just another person gone mad from isolation and the knowledge of what would come to pass.

Ignis lunged forward once more. Ravus raised his sword to parry.

A dagger in one man’s chest.

A sword through the stomach of the other.

Ravus staggered, fell backwards with a loud grunt. Ignis staggered backwards, the pain suddenly hitting him with full force. He had the High Commander’s sword stabbed through his abdomen. After all the broken ribs, all the collapsed lungs, all the cracked skulls and bent bones – this was an agony he hadn’t felt before. Gods above he was _so angry._

“ _Uncharacteristic irritability. You can still turn around and run. Find Noctis. Find Prompto, Gladiolus, the mercenary. Any of them. Ravus Nox Fleuret can still save himself and you.”_

“Shut up!” His voice was hoarse and his head was throbbing. “Shut up already!”

But King Regis didn’t shut up. He spoke over the intense static that was filling his head, and Ignis staggered forwards. Landed on his knees in front of Ravus. The High Commander and the advisor stared at each other; Ignis’ eyes feverish and unfocused and Ravus’ glazed over with pain. For a few moments they remained like that.

Then Ravus moved.

Something in Ignis’ head switched off completely. Despite the sword in his guts he lunged forwards once more with a hoarse roar of pain and anger. Landed on Ravus – the High Commander hissed in pain.

“Come to your senses!”

Ignis did not answer and instead ripped the dagger out of Ravus’ chest.

Plunged it in again.

At least he didn’t speak again. King Regis also fell silent. Finally, blissful silence.

It was, in fact, too silent. Even though the intense static that filled his ears now he noticed that the Daemons had fled. Before he could really think about that he felt someone grab him by his shirt. That person yanked him back to his feet, forced him to turn around. Ardyn’s face was contorted, and Ignis was bracing himself for a punch in the face.

Instead Ardyn yanked the sword out of his stomach. It knocked the breath out of him.

“What on good earth is _wrong_ with you!? You disobeyed clear orders!”

Ignis only wheezed.

“Pot… meet kettle…”

He registered that someone was calling for Ravus. He also knew that his dagger, truly his dagger this time, was still stuck in the High Commander’s…

Throat.

He had killed Ravus.

Ardyn dragged him away and scooped up the Trident of the Oracle with his free hand; the voices calling for the High Commander switching to someone calling for Ignis. A single, long, heart-piercing screech.

Ignis knew that someone was restraining Noctis.

All he could really do was let out a strained laugh, more of a desperate cackle; a sound that died in his throat faster than his vision started going black.

He passed out when Ardyn barked an order at some sort of winged Behemoth to keep these idiots occupied as he made his escape.


	24. FEVER

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoops! got into a writing jam, found my vague interest in ff14 again so im at least doing roulettes again every evening, decided to buy a thriller that caught my attention at work (worth it!) and remembered i got three books for christmas
> 
> i didnt die, though i came close to it when i walked face first into a giant delivery on saturday (it was just standing in the middle of the store and im not used to that yet haha)

The distant roar of battle faded quickly. For once he was aware of how utterly _debilitating_ his ancient leg injury was, and his march came to a standstill when he heard a choke.

The sword. He had removed that sword.

That idiot was bleeding to death.

Ardyn let go of Ignis and dropped to his knees. The dark around them was moving slowly, and soon enough he found himself pressing a hand on that hole in Ignis’ body.

Normally it would be wiser to put the rabid dog down. He’d said as much to provoke Prompto not too long ago, but as his brain went down a list of endless possibilities of what could go wrong, a very clear answer started to crystallise itself. As rabid as Ignis would become, until he turned he would not once hurt Noctis. Ravus had not been the prince, after all, and whatever the conversation they had had before Ardyn arrived just in time for Ignis to have just rammed his knife into Ravus’ throat had aggravated the advisor to the point of lashing out.

He ran a shaky hand through his hair. The stench of blood and incoming death was so overwhelming that even the surrounding Daemons were edging closer. Those creatures loved blood, and Ardyn let out a loud hiss to stop them in their tracks. He played the human for most of the time, but right now those instincts he normally ignored were working in his favour. He was the big fish in these waters. That pathetic bleeding lump of flesh was _his_ prey. And they backed off, acknowledging his superiority and leaving him some breathing space.

“… Now then.”

He closed his eyes and increased the pressure. After all, he was a healer. A man who could work miracles if he wanted to, even if he had long since lost the ability to purge the Scourge. The one power not even the sickness had managed to take from him was his ability to heal, to close wounds, to knit torn muscle and sinew back together, to mend organs and bones alike. He had power over time as long as bodies were concerned.

He’d healed worse things than this, but he was fighting against blood loss and the fact that Noctis and his people could catch up to them. Back when it had been his own brother impaled on several weapons no one had dared touching them. Ardyn had been in full control, had ordered weapons removed and the prayer on his lips the second the weapon left Somnus’ body. He’d sown Gilgamesh’s arm back on together with the others and forced it to reconnect to the Shield’s body.

Some torn flesh like this was… absolutely _nothing._

He breathed out slowly. His hands and the cuffs of his shirt and coat were already stained with blood.

He started not with a prayer to the gods. He hadn’t prayed to them since the time the Crystal rejected him almost violently, had not once begged their forgiveness. Instead all Ardyn Izunia did was close his eyes, whispering words in a language that only Oracles and Kings spoke nowadays.

Once more, he cheated death – just like in the good old days.

All he did was sit there in the dark, a massive headache rolling in together with waves of nausea as the only gift of the gods they could not take from him for as long as he lived his pathetic parody of a life went on did its work.

* * *

The silence in Insomnia was almost overwhelming. Not a creature left moved as Ardyn stood there in the dark, his eyes glowing just like any other Daemon’s. A dead tree groaned in the distance as the cluster of Daemons that had climbed it earlier held perfectly still; the city was waiting with baited breath as its master for as long as the sun was gone returned. He was rooted to his place, Ignis all but slung over his shoulder and unconscious still.

Just a few hundred metres ahead, a _child._

Three years into darkness, and Ardyn knew that there were some survivors still fighting back. About ten Glaives and way too many civilians. They were holed together underground in rest areas around the subway. People who had not fallen sick yet, people who not once showed their face on the surface. He let them be; the city was dead after all. There was nothing to gain here.

But now one of them had showed their face above ground. And it had to be a child with bright eyes, a terrified smile on her face as she saw another supposedly human being in a city she couldn’t remember much of in the light. She barely looked old enough to have gone to school.

Ardyn was fully aware what he must have looked like. A man in strange clothes, covered in blood. Carrying an unconscious man whose limbs dangled about as if there was not a breath of life left in him.

He blinked several times before he narrowed his eyes.

“Go back to your parents.”

She shook her head. Started signing something – was the kid mute?

Ardyn’s body unfroze as she hurriedly forwarded the message she had been told to forward by a ‘kind lady’, and he knew that this had been Shiva’s meddling again. He followed her quick signing before she stopped halfway through a sentence to look around with wide eyes. He merely repeated his earlier words, and once again she shook her head. Continued the sentence as if there hadn’t been some sort of interruption. Then, finally, she bowed.

The silence was stifling as she turned around and hurried into the streets. Ardyn, though exhausted, gave the command to let her go in peace. He continued his march back to the Citadel with not even the familiar scuttle of Daemons following him around accompanying him. All he heard was that infuriatingly silent breathing and the sound of his own limp as he carried on and on until he reached his goal.

He dropped his _baggage_ off. Turned around on his heels, nearly left the room.

Before doing that he turned back around, marched over to a desk. He left a note for once.

Then he left again.

* * *

Truth be told, he would have loved ending Ravus himself.

He knew he would have gotten what he wanted – death and the end of the Lucis Caelum bloodline – at the end anyway, but his brother and his descendants were not the only people who had wronged Ardyn. Both Somnus and the first Oracle had taken the claim for all the good he had done, had screwed it up tremendously and then acted as if they had saved the world from a horrible monster that had eaten up the Sage. The Mystic and the first Oracle, saviours of Eos, the progenitors of two families that would save Eos truly.

Lunafreya had gone down almost precisely the same path as he had. He’d done her a favour ending her life.

But merciful death was not what the bloodline deserved.

Had it all gone to plan, Ardyn would have capitalised off the fact that Lunafreya, cruel Lunafreya, had not healed her brother when she had had the chance. After that fight they had at the Altar of the Tidemother it was no secret that Ravus at least held some respect for Ignis now – and begrudging respect could turn into Ravus finally doing what he should have done long ago. Turning against the empire for the sake, or rather the memory, of his beloved little sister. Perhaps he would have finally accepted Noctis as the true Chosen, all thanks to the determination of one single person. A single person who had gone against the odds.

But it hadn’t happened the way it should have. Ardyn would now never have the satisfaction of ending the Fleuret bloodline himself, all thanks to Ifrit’s executive meddling.

He rubbed his temples as he arrived once more at the Rock of Ravatogh.

Over all those years, Ardyn had noticed several things about the Scourge in particular. Those infected were liable to run out of control, somehow. But there were rare cases where uninfected hung around infected; a small village somewhere on the coast of Niflheim had been like that ages before Ardyn had turned the entire country into a case like this. Those who were not infected had developed a horrid case of moodiness, downright hostility to strangers. They were easily influenced but seemed to be at a constant internal conflict: their bodies told them to run away, but their brains told them that those were the same people as ever. A constant sway until one side won or they became infected for real. Irritability was something that came with the Scourge, an unpredictable constant. The sway, going from hostility to calmly listening to others…

Ignis had shown that.

It had become plain irritability after their little excursion.

Ardyn stomped his foot down on the ledge he was standing on. Rock crumbled and fell down the cliff, into the abandoned nest of the bird he had killed not too long ago.

After coming up with the theory of normal people starting to get strange around the infected he had decided to test that theory in Niflheim. He had started with worming his way into the heart of Verstael Besithia, had helped the man with his developments. Surely enough, while Besithia had been strange to begin with, he very quickly became even stranger. The developmental jump from excessively weird to complete disregard for the human body was… frighteningly interesting. Then he had wormed his way through the ruling council, one by one, until Besithia managed a breakthrough in the MT project and Emperor Aldercapt was told of Ardyn’s involvement in the project at last.

The new chancellor was perfect at keeping the masses in check.

Or rather, he knew exactly what to tell the brainwashed masses that had all contracted the Scourge, and those who hadn’t accepted by extension because they weren’t sure what to think.

There were a handful people who had somehow avoided infection. Aranea Highwind was a mercenary, but she was also a Niff citizen. Normally she should have answered her emperor’s call without thinking about money, should have gladly worked overtime for the sake of her country. But quickly enough she and her group had developed a strange distaste for working overtime and being deployed for anything relating to the war. Be it collecting specimens for Besithia or actual fighting, such as her ambush at the Fort. They just couldn’t decide, just as Ignis could never decide on whether to stay or to run away. Aranea had chosen in the end – she left. Ignis had the choice removed.

Ravus himself turned out to be awful to everyone, his beloved sister whom he was trying to protect included. After the fall he had simply become a completely awful person to stay around; even the slightest bit of provocation usually sent him off into a fit of rage. He’d managed not to lash out – the fact that he died to one such lashing out would have been hilarious if Ardyn hadn’t wanted to snap his neck with his own hands.

Loqi Tummelt too had had his own little internal debate. He loved this country as much as he hated it. He was scared of Ulldor just as much as he wanted his approval. The rest of his family had not once been wrong when they said that something wasn’t _right_ with him any longer, compared to the bright and friendly and even affectionate kid he had been before his father’s untimely suicide. Traumatised children were so easy to manipulate; all Ulldor had to threaten was even more of his loved ones being driven to suicide and he immediately had the perfect puppet. A puppet that debated whether it was worth it to further his family’s shame by telling someone about this man or not.

All those people had been free to choose now that they were away from the Scourge-drenched Gralea. Ravus had chosen to do as his sister did. Aranea had chosen to leave. Loqi had chosen to take a third option and run away from home after the death of that man.

Ignis wouldn’t get that choice now. The Oracles were dead. Ardyn could not heal the Scourge – the only end to that was either to let Noctis arise as the True King, dying on the throne to eradicate the Scourge… or turning.

This time Ardyn didn’t even remotely attempt to wake Ifrit in a good mood. He raised his voice and started yelling in the language that the gods spoke, an almost shrill demand to see the Infernian. At first, nothing. Ifrit was ignoring him, and Ardyn once more stomped his foot down.

“Perchance ‘twould be wiser to answer me, Infernian, for your _petty meddling_ has _quite_ thrown history off its course – so your once-beloved tells me to tell you. I bring naught but a message for you; once that has been forwarded I shall leave just as quietly as I arrived.”

A rumble. This time, no eruption. The Infernian awoke quietly, a small local earthquake that none would care about because there were no living beings in this region any longer after the eruption.

“ _So the Accursed plays the Messenger.”_

“Cut the small talk.”

“ _Speak, then.”_

“Tch.” There were many things he wanted to tell the Infernian, but Ardyn settled for crossing his arms and recalling what the girl sent by Shiva had said. “She’s asking me to give you a warning. History is off its predetermined course, and the next chance to return it whence it came is not due for a while yet. Should you decide that now was an excellent time to strike, to cause mayhem or to do just about anything that you did not get my counsel for, they will destroy your reformed body anew – which in turn would force you to give your blessing to the Chosen, seeing as he cannot fight you for that and he _needs_ it for the prophecy you burdened this world with.”

A long moment of silence, and then the Infernian narrowed his eyes. The heat was unbearable, but Ardyn had long since stopped feeling things. If he walked down the mountain with burns so bad that the collapsed on his way down and died, fine.

“ _And the reason for me asking your counsel is…?”_

“Easy.” Ardyn shrugged. “I know the workings of the mortal world. I _control_ this darkness. I can command the Daemons to keep their claws off the surviving humans because I know what will harm them more than it will sharpen their wits and strength. You, on the other hand, do not. Should you decide to mess with the mortals because you tire of this long waiting game – ha – you would wipe them out. I know you are _burning_ to challenge the Chosen, but the time is not yet right. You are… to wait for _my_ command.”

He smiled at the Infernian, and the ancient, supposedly dead god scowled back down at him.

“Which only makes sense. Considering that you interfered with my work and caused this whole situation to escalate. I could have controlled a healthy human. A Scourge-infected one however? I cannot. Good job!”

Ardyn did leave this mountain after he collapsed halfway down, his burnt body no longer viably keeping him in that so-called state of being alive. He stared at Shiva in the beyond, and she merely nodded.

* * *

“To answer the question you surely want to ask – no. I cannot heal the Scourge.”

Not any longer, but he did not add that much. Teetering on the verge of turning into a mindless creature of darkness or not, Ignis was intelligent enough to figure that much out by himself.

The advisor’s green eyes were almost striking in the dark, and Ardyn was aware that this meant he was starting to develop an actual sense of seeing in the dark now. He’d managed to get by by memorising where everything was, relying on magic to light his way and a small flashlight that he had attached to his clothes. But now that thing was gone – yet Ignis was clearly looking at him with a focused look on his face.

“Congratulations! You no longer need glasses.”

“… I have not… worn any in three years.”

“No, no.” Ardyn waved his hand through the air with a sigh. “Perhaps it has not settled in quite yet, but I reckon that dear dead Ravus counted down a list of symptoms before you completely lost your marbles and attacked him.” That growl was low and almost a little scary, but Ardyn ignored the fact that Ignis understood his taunts. “What he and his family always fail to mention to those afflicted is that it isn’t just negative symptoms. Did you know Gralea had the lowest rate of people needing prescriptions to fix their eyesight? The lowest rate of overall sickness – being infected cancels out anything else like a lousy bacteria infection. Viral? Please. Even chronic pain not relating to severe injuries went down, and those related to injuries? Oh, I don’t know. Would you say I kick as well as anyone else with not bum legs, or do you want another demonstration?”

The advisor held his gaze but said nothing.

“Before long your vision will return to perfect. You will see in the dark just as sharply as you did in the light, and in turn the light will make you wince. Though light sensitivity displays much earlier than dark vision. Even injuries will heal faster than before as long as they are not life-threatening. After all the Scourge was sent by a god of life – as long as you remain alive, you will have positive aspects as well as the negative ones that come with it being a sickness. Superhuman strength! Superhuman seizures. Brilliance in the tactical thinking! Brilliance wasted on someone going insane. That is why hope staves off the Scourge so well – hope can make insanity less likely to take root. That is why those who hoped until their maximum time limit was retain the ability to speak.”

Ignis shook his head. He lacked the disgust that he normally displayed whenever Ardyn spoke about speaking Daemons and the Scourge at large.

“Permit me one question, Your Majesty. Two, actually.”

“Go ahead.”

“You said… those who hoped until their _maximum time limit_ was exceeded retain the ability to speak. What… what exactly do you mean by that?”

Ardyn gestured vaguely and shooed Ignis down the corridors of the Citadel. This was not something he was going to talk about in a hallway. The advisor followed, his confusion plain on his face now. Eventually they reached a ruined library, this time one that held only fiction. Allegedly King Regis had quite enjoyed this place even after taking over the throne following his father’s passing, though most people would have pegged the solemn and dedicated leader of the country to be more into reading travelling reports. But no, fiction had caught the king’s attention like nothing else between the dry reports that he went over every day. Ardyn almost laughed when he heard that rumour and felt some sort of kinship with his very, very distant great-great- _whatever_ nephew Regis. Fiction was delightful and even he himself enjoyed one or two books like that every once in a while.

He grabbed a book from a shelf and tossed it to Ignis. The advisor caught it and turned it over to look at it with a critical glare.

“Have you ever read this delightful series?”

Ignis coughed. _“The Art of Seasons?_ No. I’m afraid I am not quite a fan of… this kind of book.”

“Dystopian youth literature was the favourite of teenagers and even people your age back in Niflheim. Perhaps because they lived in such a regimen and most readers likely knew as much. But I digress. _The Art of Seasons_ is a four book series – all four of them on a strict time limit. The time limit? Come now. As long as the seasons last. The first in the series is _Summer._ ”

“You tossed me _Spring.”_ There was some annoyance in Ignis’ voice as he pointed out the obvious.

“Which is the last. Where all the hopes and desires come to a head, to close the story. They nearly exceed the time limit to solve their problems. _Winter,_ the previous one in the series, had a main character exceed the time limit for their duties. They could not bring peace to the people of the mountain village, and the village burns. They burn with those people.”

Ignis’ eyes were locked onto the book in his hands. “So exceeding the time limit means death.”

“Precisely. Such is what the leaders of the country made the rules of this game they call ‘art of seasons’.” Ardyn looked at the shelf some more, a satisfied smile on his face. This was an outstanding collection of books, many of which had not been available in Niflheim. “The Scourge operates on a similar base. The only difference is that you can stretch the time limit. People do not turn with the change of seasons. Strong desires and hopes can extend the time limit from one season to two, to three, to a year. To _decades.”_

Verstael Besithia and Iedolas Aldercapt were two of the strongest offenders of the desires clause. It wasn’t hope that had driven them, but the principle had been the same. He had told Ignis as much.

“Exceed the _maximum_ time allotted to your case, however, and it all goes to hell. Let’s say your maximum time limit is ten years from now. You’ll be 35 if you manage to stretch it. You still want to keep going, but you just _cannot._ So you turn, still thinking you can do whatever it is that you want to do. What will I be left with? A Daemon that speaks, that voices its twisted thoughts and desires.”

He heard Ignis breathe in loudly and exhaling slowly. He didn’t even have to turn around to see that the advisor was likely trembling now.

“Granted, the cases you told me of were… similar. The mother who lost her child to kidnapping, who spent years searching for it only to never find it. She turned having found a lead, that her kid likely lived in a village nearby. That desire became corrupted. She merely kidnapped children in return, demanded they hand her hers back. It was all thanks to Oracle Sylva that this nightmare ended. The kidnapped children however were all dead or had turned into the Daemons sealed into the cave with her. And that is whom you found thanks to the Fulgurian.”

Ignis dropped the book. The dull thud echoed through the room like a cannon being fired, and Ardyn only laughed.

“And your second question?”

“… Ah...” Ignis was definitely shocked by what he had just been told, and struggled to find his words. “Did you… did you plan on… me? Being… being a _patient?”_

He finally turned around to look at the terrified advisor. Ardyn clicked his tongue.

“No.”

“Then… how?”

“Normally exposure, but you were linked to the Chosen. That gives you a degree of immunity as long as no Daemon chews off your limbs or whatever. No, we’ll have to thank the Infernian for that.”

Executive meddling normally was Ardyn’s forte. He had manipulated the countries of Eos to an almost masterful degree, though that was mostly related to reactions to what Niflheim was doing. But even against a god’s interference he was powerless. And now his hilarious little toy was breaking.

Ignis just turned around and left, claiming he wasn’t feeling so well. Ardyn let him go.

* * *

If things had been different, he was fairly certain he could have befriended the Oracle. She’d been an intelligent woman, while cold and calculating she had a special kind of humour that rather few people understood. That, and her knowledge of herbs had been unrivalled by even the best healers of their times, up to and including Ardyn himself. The Lady Fleuret as people called her had a knack for finding the right things at the right time, and soon enough people called it a blessing of the Six just as they called the powers of the Caelum siblings a blessing. Just as they called the sheer strength of that one mercenary from the small village in Risorath called Lix a blessing.

The people called a lot of things a blessing back then, she had noted the one and only time that Ardyn met her.

That had been after he had been banished, when his mind was a maelstrom of hatred for this woman and his brother. She’d warded him off after saying these words, a knowing smile on her face. A blessing of the gods, bestowed upon her and her children by the selfsame gods that had once bestowed a similar gift upon Ardyn.

Her descendants meant nothing to him.

Ravus had been an amusing little tool. Hatred was so easy to control and channel into the right direction, and having a wildcard that King Regis did not count on was something that Ardyn appreciated having. It had worked rather nicely in the end, no matter how pre-emptively he bit the dust.

Lunafreya had been an obstacle. She had promised what so many of her infernal bloodline had promised, but she had gone a step further. His arm was almost completely numb right now, and Ardyn had left the city to stalk around the countryside.

Duscae was such a lovely and desolate piece of earth. The swamps and since dried, and even the lakes had shrunk. What had once been home to the rare but imposing and wonderful Catoblepas was now a murky still body of water that likely held half-Daemonised Malboros at this point. But not even after a day of walking around he felt any better, and the numbness in his arm seemed to spread to the shoulders now.

Normally he would have dismissed that as bogus. He was the Sage; he knew that magic normally dissipated after the caster died. But what he had to factor into this case right now was the fact that Lunafreya had been the Oracle destined to work beside the Chosen King, a part of the play. An actor on the stage whose destiny it was to depose of the oldest actor on the stage, someone sent by the gods. Her magic was not as ancient as Ardyn’s was, but it was powerful and it was more than likely that one of the Hexatheon had their horrible godly hands in this case right now.

Thus, Ardyn turned his gaze to the skies.

“You little minx. Show yourself, Lunafreya.”

He did not get an answer, but he definitely felt something in the atmosphere shift. His numb arm was still numb, but the base of his shoulder started hurting rather awkwardly.

“If this is about your late brother, surely the lady Shiva ought to have told you about it being out of my direct influence. If you must haunt someone over this, haunt the god who infected his murderer or the man who murdered him in the first place. … Though, you likely already had your fill of haunting Ignis Scientia and trying to avert this disaster, hadn’t you?”

Again no answer, but that was enough of an answer for Ardyn. At least he started feeling his arm again slowly but steadily, Lunafreya’s momentary wrath apparently dissipating.

“Believe what you will, but this was far from an ideal outcome even for myself. But we cannot undo what has been done, and Ignis Scientia will pay the price unless the Ring of the Lucii finds its way into your _beloved_ Noctis’ hands and his gathering of power does not take longer than the time Ignis has left as thinking human. Those afflicted will be healed when the Chosen dies, won’t they?”

“… _That they will be. Just as you will be given your eternal rest, those who lived on the verge of turning will get their lives back.”_

Her voice was solemn and very, very distant. She was dead; the dead could not cross the borders between life and death just as the living could not for as long as their hearts still beat. But hearing her meant that she was stuck in the in-between, not free to pass on like the others had been. A ghost, an apparition of some kind that served the gods just as Messengers did. The Lucii.

“ _I came to ask a question.”_

“And instead of talking to me like a normal ghost from the beyond, you decided to torture me a little. Fair enough – I surely would have done the same to catch my murderer’s attention.”

She was quiet for a few minutes as Ardyn continued walking, until he decided to walk into the stale water of the lake. He could _feel_ the disgust roll off her in waves as he sloshed around in that horrible muddy water, when his feet hit something that definitely felt like either a body that was stuck in the muck or a Daemon that decided to sleep in the water. It probably was the former.

“Now then, did you not say you had a question to ask me?”

“… _The collateral damage you caused. Was this all planned?”_

“Altissia, yes. Niflheim, yes. Insomnia, how would people your age say this… hell yes. You, the most revered Lady Oracle Lunafreya Nox Fleuret? Absolutely. Even your brother was planned to be _collateral_ damage. But that is not why you asked this question, did you?”

She seemed to think about that as Ardyn left the water once again and instead turned to look at a suspiciously lush bush by the side of the water. Without sunlight all those plants should have died long ago, but as he inspected this one he started to realise that nature was slowly starting to adapt to the lack of sunrise. That plant in particular worked with just the barebones light of the night, and the little flowers on it seemed to glow softly in the dark. Much like deep-sea creatures, a special kind of plant seemed to be emerging now that there was no light.

“Come now, Lunafreya. From Accursed to Oracle – you asked because of the other people involved in this mess.”

“… _Specifically one Nyx Ulric. Was his intervention planned? Was he supposed to put on the Ring of the Lucii and lose his life in the light of the rising sun just so I could flee with the ring and make my way to Noctis come Altissia?”_

He had grabbed some of the leaves of the bush and pulled them off. They almost immediately stopped glowing and he dropped them. Watched them flutter to the ground. He could feel that she was not happy about this silence, but eventually Ardyn let out a laugh.

“The Ring of the Lucii was always supposed to fall into your precious Noctis’ hands in Altissia, just as you dying while delivering it was planned. Now then, Ulric’s little headless intervention was _not_ planned. People who lack royal blood die. That was what was supposed to happen to him. He should have put it on and killed Drautos by burning the two of them. And in the wake of that little pyre you were supposed to snatch the ring and flee into the night. The Diamond Weapons were specifically instructed to let you pass, though without anyone else holding you down as you fled you would have been free to use your magic to defend yourself regardless.”

“ _How… how… Ah.”_

She sounded like she was about to start crying. Ardyn rolled his eyes. “Surely he is not the first fool to die for the Oracle, and he was definitely not the last. The fact that the Lucii let him live for as long as he did was the more outrageous event in any case.”

The Ring of the Lucii, the token that so violently rejected any and all people that were not of the Lucis Caelum bloodline. Or it at least was supposed to. The Lucii had not killed Ravus for his hubris, and they had let Nyx Ulric gain full control over it before they demanded their usual tribute for the bold assumption that the Lucii listened to people not of royal blood.

“Perhaps you ought to forward the ring to Noctis.”

“ _I cannot. It is not--”_

“Within your hands. So I’ve been told. Well then, perhaps you ought to consider helping getting it back to him.”

She did not speak again after that.


	25. from silence, trust

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> we're... definitely going to pass my previous longest fanfic ever. Which I only just wrote last year. Literally last year; I think May was the month where I picked up the slack with Amaranthus again after realising that my Prompto storyline depended on me finishing my take on Episode Prompto before the actual thing released... So I stamped out a large chunk of my 146k words fanfic over the span of a month. Then I moved. THEN I had no internet for like nearly two weeks.
> 
> nothing like that's gonna happen with tu fui, though. I'm not moving. Only thing that'll happen is me falling over in bed dead after the ff14 patch and work (which ive been doing a lot. god im so tired lately i hate summer)

“Shit!” Gladio let go of him.

“Not good, not good at all!” Prompto’s voice was strangely muffled, and he knew that he was choking back panic or tears. Or both.

He’d been struggling against his friend, had let out a screech that he hadn’t considered his throat capable of as Ardyn dragged Ignis away. Now a giant Behemoth was lazily moving in between them and the Accursed, but all the energy that Noctis had had dissipated near immediately. He was only sitting there on his knees, watching his friends and the others that were finding their way to them now that the Daemons that had separated them were dying one by one fight the creature. That mutation was something he had never seen before – winged and spewing forth ice. Behemoths had already been formidable without gaining power through mutation, but this thing was downright terrifying. But Noctis couldn’t move.

It was as if his energy had just completely left him as his mind tried to wrap itself around what had just happened. Someone pulled him to his feet and shoved him out of the way. He heard the grunt of someone taking an attack meant for him, but all he could do was stare some more without really seeing what was going on. Gladio was barking orders, someone wrapped their arms around him and lifted him off the ground. Carried him away and out of the Behemoth’s immediate reach.

Noctis merely stared at the Niff – he hadn’t seen such a dire expression on the young man’s face since he had gotten to know him properly. Loqi took off with a howl, gunblade at the ready as he went back into the fray.

“This one’s a Niff breed! Aim for the wings, try to slash its throat; even if we don’t kill it that way it should disable this infernal ice nonsense!”

Ice.

For a terrifying moment Noctis stood in the long-dead field of Sylleblossoms, the gentle touch of frost fresh on his skin. The glimmering light of the Glacian was being reflected off the flowers that she had raised out of the ground, a crystalline image in the inky darkness around Fenestala Manor in Tenebrae.

He snapped his head back up. The ones who held a blessing were struggling against the Behemoth; it was as if some sort of influence on it had vanished.

Noctis stood up, slowly. Shakily. He choked back another scream as he staggered forward, a surge of terror and grief almost incapacitating him. But there were times for him to shut down – this wasn’t one. He almost fell over from shock alone as he got on his knees next to Ravus.

The High Commander – his almost brother-in-law – was dead. There was absolutely nothing to be done about that. Noctis tried not to think about it as he gently reached forwards. Closed his eyes and stood back up. Not too far from him Ardyn had discarded his sword, Ignis’ blood still on it.

He quickly leaned down again and removed the dagger from Ravus’ neck. Gods, this very blade was so familiar that Noctis nearly broke down right there. The first time he saw Ignis in three years and it had been Ardyn yelling at him, ripping Ravus’ sword from his body and dragging him away. The first time in three years, and Ignis had just _killed Ravus._

Almost too slowly he got back up and walked to where the sword lay. Its wielder was dead, and there were none he could think of that deserved or could wield this weapon. Most Niffs fought with machinery or weapons with machinery built into it; Loqi with his sabre that he only called ‘gunblade’, Aranea with her intimidating Stoss Spear.

Noctis picked it up.

The weapon was a foreign weight in his hand, but Noctis was not going to think about this too much right now.

Attached to the handle was what Ravus had received from the Oracle, with the faint apparition that only so vaguely looked like his late mother bowing as he accepted it. Much like all those others gathered here, a blessing. Noctis technically did not need these. He was of the bloodline that granted these blessings, though it was Luna who had woken them with her desperate call in Altissia. Two bloodlines, but only one person of it remained. Oracle Sylva had died in the fires that still haunted his and her children’s nightmares. Oracle Lunafreya had been washed away by the tide. King Regis had died in the desolation of destruction. Blood of the Oracle Ravus had died in the silence of the dark.

Prince – no, King Noctis was the only one left standing. It only seemed right that he took that sword that the Emperor of Niflheim had bestowed upon the prince without a throne. The sigil hummed with magical energy, a familiar cool feeling. Crystalline magic, the very same that ran through his blood. He could _feel_ the others nearby now, their blessings flickering as they fought.

Noctis took a deep breath. Reached out to what tied those people to him.

The Crystal in the distant Lestallum hummed, responded to him.

We hear you, Chosen. Speak.

“I know I… cannot control it without the ring. I know what I ask for is… hubris. But I ask of you… help me protect. As much power as you can lend one without the Ring of the Lucii.”

Your voice wavers. The blood of the Oracle has been spilled to its very end. Is that why you wish to protect? Is what you seek the power to heal?

“Not to heal.” Ravus had said that even though he was one of the Fleuret bloodline, all he could do was _mend._ Healing in turn was something only the Oracles could do, and after a while Noctis learned the difference. A healer expunged darkness; a mender merely mended. Healers were much stronger, and though Ravus was already almost imposingly strong he had said that Lunafreya was the stronger one time and time again. “I wish to _mend._ I wish to _protect._ I cannot raise a Wall, old or new, without the ring. But let me deflect blows.”

Such is the gift bestowed upon your bloodline. You need only reach for the power you seek. It has always been yours to claim.

He stepped forwards with the sword firmly in his hands. Alba Leonis glinted in the dark, hummed in response to the magic that surged through it as Noctis _warped._

The sound of glass shattering accompanied him as a jagged shard of ice crashed against a shield he summoned mid-warp; and all he saw was Monica staring at it with wide eyes as ice and crystalline shards rained down on her.

He felt like every step he took towards that Behemoth was accompanied by the clack of boots on ice. He pointed his sword at the creature that was by now confused. The others backed away, Prompto almost stumbling over his own feet as he ran past Noctis. Another step. This time it was loud and sharp, cut through the darkness like a warm blade through the snow.

Beside him stood Gentiana, her head bowed.

All he did was point the weapon at the Behemoth, and her figure melted. The blacks gave way to cold blue, and the next step he took forward made spikes of ice rise from the ground.

Shiva smiled – a sad smile, one full of an emotion that he couldn’t quite understand.

Then the sheer cold engulfed all.

* * *

He blinked his eyes open blearily. His entire body felt like it was made of lead, his limbs unresponsive. Gods, he was sore all over. Like someone had reached into his body and yanked his nerves until nothing remained. Numb all over.

It had been so long since he had entered a state of stasis that horrible, but Noctis figured he deserved that much after calling upon something he was technically born to control but couldn’t without the Ring of the Lucii.

Someone next to him shuffled. He slowly turned his head.

“Heya, buddy.”

“Prompto.”

“Good morning to you too, Noct. Been a long time since you last collapsed on us after entering stasis. And yeah, it’s been a day, before you ask. Conserve your strength, man.”

The unspoken warning was that there were worse things to come sooner rather than later. Noctis hummed an agreement and realised only now that he was very cold. Almost too cold. He shuddered and Prompto reached over to pull his blanket further up.

“Yeah, you’ve been like a human popsicle while you were asleep. No wonder you’re cold.”

Prompto reached over to ruffle his hair. Noctis only grunted.

* * *

If nothing else, Niflheim was a surprisingly generous conquering country. Even though Tenebrae had been severed from its actual royal family and there was a quite literal city state in the middle of it, until the day Fenestala Manor fell every single Tenebraen was allowed to come and go as they pleased. Accordo retained its status as trading alliance first and foremost, and each and every city was allowed to trade freely with all states that belonged to the empire. Perhaps Noctis could have ruled in a Lucis that had been conquered by Niflheim as long as he acknowledged that the emperor was his superior. A king on a throne that was mostly for show until the country recovered from the long and arduous war that had nearly torn Eos asunder. Perhaps his grandchildren could have plotted an uprising against the faraway Niflheim government, could have freed Lucis from the empire.

Then again, Insomnia had supposedly been suggested as single city state in an empire-controlled Lucis, not unlike Fenestala Manor had been in Tenebrae before the death of Oracle Sylva and the subsequent burning of the forests around the manor.

Those people looked far from vicious conquerors now. They were all bowing their heads at him as he passed by, called him majesty like everyone else did. Answered his questions as well as they could. The supposed Niff superiority complex had melted in the wake of darkness.

“Ah? I’m afraid I haven’t seen her at all since you all returned.”

“Saw her. Looked horrible.”

“I think she was yelling at Tummelt before she stalked off. Told him to go to the infirmary to get that limp checked out, though.”

“Have you tried the central plaza yet? Yes? Then I have no idea, I’m afraid.”

“The greenhouse district maybe? She did say she needed a moment for herself, and that’s about the only place you can get these.”

“Sorry, Your Majesty. Dunno where she went.”

“Nope, no clue. If you see her, tell her we’ve got what she asked for.”

Truth be told, Noctis had not once considered that Niffs had feelings other than bringing so-called glory to the empire. It was Aranea who had shaken that belief when she had attacked him and left even though she was clearly winning because she didn’t like working overtime. It was once again Aranea who taught him that despite all the propaganda-fuelled brainwashing there were a good chunk of Niffs who were decent people underneath the layers. Her claiming that she wanted to leave if things got even shittier and her subsequent answering Ravus’ call for backup had been what cemented his opinion of her and her mercenaries at long last.

Decent people, unfortunate circumstances.

It turned out that most Niffs were like that, but Aranea herself remained about as steadfast as a, in her own words, ‘fucking boulder wedged between a rock and a hard place during a hurricane’. The first Niff Noctis trusted.

The last Niff he ever expected to be sitting in the calmest place in all of Lestallum during the dark. Aranea was a woman of constant action, someone who was either training by herself, training others, or in the field. She was the High Commander’s right-hand woman, the only person who was allowed to cut Ravus down to size. The one who did the rescue flights, responded to emergencies fastest. A woman who had single-handedly bested Gladio in battle several times, someone who had impressed a ruler of yore. Aranea seemingly never stood still just as the Wise had, a match made in hell as Iris called it after the woman beat her brother in a mock duel.

But right now she looked like a deflated balloon. Noctis had rarely ever seen her out of her armour, let alone sitting perfectly still in the silence of the greenhouse district. He said nothing and instead sat down next to her.

After a few minutes she sighed, which Noctis took as permission to talk to her.

“Wedge said he and Biggs have what you asked for,” he said softly, and Aranea let out another sigh.

“Mhm.”

Three years into darkness. She was a mercenary who had fought for money, who had extracted specimens from all over Lucis, perhaps even the rest of Eos. She had navigated ancient Sol ruins with relative ease, had fought under the cover of darkness like a woman possessed long before the sun stopped rising. She’d always been one to tell others to get their shit together. This entire scene looked wrong.

At some point she moved slightly – she brushed her hair out of her eyes.

“Y’know, never expected to be so shaken by someone dyin’. Hell, I’ve been in the business for ages; I’ve seen talented people come and go. Not so talented people. Civilians. That’s what you do in the army. You either live long enough to see the war come to an end, or you die desperately attempting to bring it to an end, whether you’re on the side of the ones who started it or on the side of those being attacked.” She let out a long sigh. “Well. I mean. I can’t really talk. We Niffs are all complicit. Masterful manipulation of our country notwithstanding, we could’ve just… dunno. Teamed up. Underground resistance. Pretty sure at least Accordo had something like that going on as well. So why not Niflheim?”

Because they were being manipulated on every front, but Noctis held his tongue.

“Kinda had a thing for the Oracle when I was your age. She was just that gorgeous. Brave. Wonderful all around. But way out of my league, and technically I’m one of the people she rightfully should have hated for everything that happened and turning her brother into an asshole. So I didn’t think about it too much. And then she died.”

It hadn’t really struck Noctis until she had been pronounced dead that all of Eos adored the Oracle. The planet had likely grieved for Sylva the same when she had died, but the overwhelming grief after Luna’s alleged death had nearly made him fear that she had truly died. Quite a few people denied that she had died in Altissia even after darkness had fallen.

They all changed their mind when they saw Ravus.

“And all of a sudden, I realised I never got to meet her. Y’know. The one thing I always wanted, even if she was way out of my league. Wasn’t even in Altissia for her speech. And all I saw was her brother. Guy looked like he had lost the ground underneath his feet when he asked me how much my going rate was again. Honest to all gods, I would’ve done it for free. Just because he looked the way I felt. Guess we bonded because of that.”

She exhaled slowly and stood up. Drew her hand through the Sylleblossoms in this part of the greenhouse district.

“Dunno. I started enjoying his presence after a while. The fact he paid me enough to live the rest of my life as wasteful bastard doesn’t even matter; he was… Like, he was… there was something about him that I started enjoying. Once we got past the mutual grief for Lunafreya we realised we had a bunch of other things in common.”

Noctis stood up to stand beside her.

“Man, listen to me dumping that all on you. Sorry about that. You said Wedge had what I asked for? Great. That’s one burden off my shoulders. There’s something else I wanna ask but...”

“Aranea…?”

She shook her head. “We gotta tell the people left in Tenebrae. I don’t want to leave them in the… ha, dark. I don’t want to like, have the sun rise and them expecting Ravus to come back and at least help with the reconstruction effort. Part of Fenestala Manor’s mine, anyway, that was his payment so… I want to tell them. Offer them to come here with us again. But yeah, later. Later. After… after.”

After they buried Ravus.

Noctis watched her leave, unwilling to make her even more uncomfortable. So he remained, standing beside the flowers that Lunafreya had loved so much. Beside the flowers that Ravus in turn loved.

The flowers of a country without a royal family.

* * *

Normally he would have shut down. After Gralea he had, only to have Ravus storm in and slap some sense into him. After Cor’s death he needed the distance to realise what had happened.

This time, Noctis all but threw himself into work. He made a point in having Ravus’ sword by his side always, even asked the others to train with him so he could properly wield it. He spent an outrageous amount of time training when the people didn’t need him – most likely because he needed to learn two things at once.

Enchanting energy drinks was not hard. It was something he’d learned when he had been a kid, to a point he had once turned Ignis’ vitamin water into a restorative that Ignis hadn’t needed and thrown up a few hours later. Restoratives when they weren’t needed were dangerous, even. What was an antidote could cause poisoning, what was supposed to heal could cause injuries. That was why he had always made certain that he and the others didn’t use them unless strictly necessary, with Ignis reinforcing that point almost uncharacteristically aggressively after snatching a potion from Prompto’s hands.

But actual healing magic was different. Not a single person had been able to cast these until Luna had freed that power across all of Eos, had returned the ability to cast to the Glaives who had been severed from it after his father’s death. None of them were as skilled with it as Ravus had been, but Noctis how held the High Commander’s sword – and the blessing of the Oracle.

He had considered handing it to a Glaive a hundred times. Had turned the little trinket over in his hands for hours on end, trying to figure out who would be a worthy recipient of that power.

In the end, he decided to keep it and learn how to heal without relying on what was becoming a rare commodity nowadays.

Another funeral pyre, interrupted only by Aranea tossing a bouquet of Sylleblossoms into the fire. Apparently that was what they did in Tenebrae, and she’d asked her best friends and partners in crime to get someone to make this for her. Somehow it made the whole thing… more tragic. Cindy hiccuped beside Noctis, and even Gladio had to look away after that.

Once that was over, he started his training. For the first time in years he spent most of his time consistently in stasis, rolling over and tossing in bed miserably as he shivered. He crushed most of his stash of restoratives that affected his magic stamina.

But then, after what felt like an eternity, he watched a deep gash on Prompto’s leg close with minimal fussing. Sure, he passed out after that on top of his friend, but he had managed to heal. Had closed a wound. Not with the same elegance as Luna had healed, not with the stern determination and ease that Ravus had displayed, but he had healed.

Finally something the Chosen had done without the Ring of the Lucii, and he almost wanted to laugh at the Crystal. He could do things without the blessings of his bloodline. He could at least help patch up injuries in the field without digging into the rest of his restoratives. Those were best kept for emergencies where no one with the ability to heal was around – and Ravus had been the best healer around and about.

Only once he found himself sitting on the roof with the notebook in his hands. A dried flower, all those stickers and notes and letters that he and Luna had sent one another over the years. This was the last notebook; the others were likely still in her room in Tenebrae. Looking at these he only started crying. Hysterically, almost.

He had never wanted either of them to die. Luna had been one of his best friends, a steady pillar of support just as Ignis had been. True, it would have never been a marriage of love but perhaps he could have reciprocated her feelings eventually. All he really wanted was to see her again, to laugh with her as they had when they were children. To sit in a field of flowers with her and maybe be the one who sang this time around. Ravus on the other hand had been a steadfast supporter in the last few years. Though a chasm had divided him and Noctis they had managed to bridge that gap, had managed to return to Tenebrae together and come back stronger for it. Though they would never be friends, Ravus and Noctis had been partners in a sense. Like past kings and their Oracles, perhaps; two bound together by duty and destiny but not by friendship.

The Fleuret bloodline had died out. Much like the Lucis Caelum family they never had more than one child at a time, and even when there were instances of multiple children the other one either died or was simply not allowed to have children.

Now there were none left.

That was far from something Noctis ever wanted. People dying for him or because of him was… entirely too much.

He eventually stopped crying and left the roof, determined to not consider this a moment of weakness but a moment of direly needed grief.

* * *

The people of Tenebrae declined their offer of coming to Lestallum with them.

Surprisingly enough, they did not nail Noctis with looks of hatred. Even those people who had glared at Ravus seemed honestly shocked that he had died now, and several faces in the crowd looked like they regretted never talking to their now dead crown prince again.

Aranea swore the heartfelt oath that she would do just as Ravus had promised – that in the event that the darkness was about to worsen, she would do everything she could to ensure that nothing happened to the people here. She had been expecting the people to tell her to get lost; she was a Niff after all. One of the people who had conquered this country, one of the people who might as well have driven the sword into Oracle Sylva’s body and the knife into Oracle Lunafreya’s stomach. But instead the people all nodded, accepted her proposal. Thanked her, even. Thanked Noctis for delivering the message that their royal house had died out.

Then they all bowed to him.

The Chosen.

If only he could do something about the dark. But every time he attempted to call for the gods, Shiva only whispered that he needed to find the Ring of the Lucii first and foremost, or otherwise the planet would suffer. It was already suffering, he would retort, but he never got an answer from the goddess of ice. She seemed… withdrawn. Like she hadn’t expected this turn of events and that it was upsetting her. She had mentioned that something was not going the way it was supposed to when he had seen her in Tenebrae together with Ravus, but this was getting kind of ridiculous.

The only leads they had were the fact that it never washed up on the shores, and that the crown city was occupied by Ardyn… and Ignis.

He was trying to find Gladio when he returned, but as it turned out his Shield had also been looking for him.

“Noct, there’s something I wanna ask you about.”

“Well, I want to ask you something as well, so… who starts?”

As it turned out, they were both thinking about Insomnia. Gladio laughed kind of awkwardly when he realised that, and Noctis shook his head in disbelief.

“And why do you want to go back to the city? Or send some Glaives into it and try to win ground?”

Noctis closed his eyes with a sigh. “Ardyn… probably has a clue where the Ring of the Lucii is. According to the Six I need it. So I would like to search the city. And you?”

Gladio crossed his arms. “You’ll… not like this. But after Ravus’ death I… honestly, Noct, I think Ignis is in full control of himself but absolutely going mad from… something.”

“Something…?”

Noctis had kept the dagger. It was safely stored in his Armiger, a place that not a single person on all of Eos had access to. It rested beside the notebook in suspension, just waiting for him to call it. It was so very tempting sometimes to grab it, but unlike the notebook he resisted the temptation. It was only bound to make him even more miserable than he already was; a broken heart was something that ached rather fiercely.

Right now he was staring at Gladio with wide eyes.

“I know you and many others have the theory that he’s being controlled by Ardyn somehow, but… After all we’ve seen so far, it wouldn’t make sense. Ardyn usually fled when we came across him. Prompto shot him in the head once but he just got up and left. No attacking, no revenge. Nothing. He’s biding his time. But Ignis definitely attacked Ravus – we’ve seen the aftermath. Maybe he even attacked Cor.”

“Now you’re just being ridiculous!”

Gladio shook his head. “We dunno who or what killed Cor. But we do know that Ignis killed Ravus. But anyway, as I was trying to say. Ignis probably isn’t being controlled. But you’ve seen people change their behaviour when they caught the Scourge.”

Noctis’ heart skipped a beat. “Are you… saying that Ignis is… sick?”

“Maybe. It would explain his erratic behaviour. From accepting Ardyn’s proposal to come with him to turning his back on us, on _you,_ to killing Ravus and getting dragged away by Ardyn. Honestly Noct, it might sound cold and you might wanna knock my teeth out or something but. Ignis really, truly loved you. Unless your life was in danger he’d never do such an idiotic thing as going with the enemy.”

But Noctis’ life had been in danger. He paled as he remembered how Ravus had retold parts of what had happened at the Altar of the Tidemother, how Ardyn had come out unexpectedly, how he had played with a dagger right above Noctis’ head. Thus Ignis accepting if only to make Ardyn stop made sense. What didn’t make sense was everything that had happened in Gralea, but… Ardyn was the Accursed. He was the harbinger of death, the one who spread the Scourge. Ignis could _easily_ have been infected by the time they arrived in Gralea, and even just the beginnings of an infection was enough to make people act in strange ways.

He dragged a hand down his face. “You… you have a point. But what does that have to do with going to Insomnia?”

“We’re gonna beat the answer out of him. Hells know he deserves it by now.”

Again, Gladio had a point. He had a point surprisingly often when he didn’t let his anger get the better of him – but he had mellowed down after Cor’s death. He was more focused nowadays, a lot more like his late father than the Gladio Noctis had grown up with. An impressive head of the Crownsguard rather than the devoted idiot who had left them all alone to sort his confidence issues out by doing something reckless and stupid.

This sounded reckless and stupid. A lot more like the old Gladio, but it was delivered with the reasoning of the current Gladio.

Noctis narrowed his eyes, and his Shield immediately raised his hands.

“Hey now, I’m not cryin’ for an eye for an eye. Best way to figure out whether he’s being controlled or not, or if it’s the Scourge or just him being a complete madman, is to confront him directly. Our only chance is to corner him somewhere in Insomnia; you’ve seen how slippery he is when he’s out on his own. Other than Ravus and Iris none of us talked to him – and Ravus is dead, and Iris convinced he’s being controlled because of the way he acted two years ago.”

Dead men couldn’t speak. Ravus wouldn’t be telling them if he learned something of note; he was not an Oracle and not important enough to the gods to warrant letting him speak from the beyond. If they killed Ignis they would never learn his reasons for doing what he had done.

Noctis… nodded.

“You’re… right. It’s our only chance to learn something from Ignis. Maybe he knows where the Ring of the Lucii is, too.”

He ordered Gladio to train people. In three months he wanted them to be ready to storm into Insomnia and take part of the underground system back to use as base of some sort.

* * *

Surprisingly enough, it was Iris who volunteered as leader of the first group. Noctis side-eyed Gladio – he had expected the older Amicitia to vehemently protest against his sister going into the fray like that, no matter how outstanding her progress had been. But Gladio kept his mouth shut; he and Iris actually exchanged a meaningful glance of a sort.

Noctis agreed. If there was one person he trusted to be able to keep track of others, it was Iris. Following her proposal came some Niffs who also volunteered to go in fighting. All of them belonged to the group that Iris had saved – they said as much. They wanted to make certain that she was unharmed, just as she had given it her all to protect them two years ago. Noctis however said that he would love to let them help Iris, but it was not his call to make.

The Niffs had lost their de-facto leader with Ravus. Army ranks meant precious little here in Lestallum, and Aranea and Loqi technically had the same kind of rank. They both had a claim to the title of leader of Niflheim’s forces and people within Lestallum. Theoretically. Once he found them he realised that they had sorted any sort of hierarchy troubles long, long ago.

Aranea had claimed that Loqi was part of her group of mercenaries. An honorary member of some sort, but a member nonetheless. Which made her his superior. And Loqi had accepted that proposal at some point.

The dragoon was the one who called the shots for the Niffs now. And all she did was put her hands on her hips to glare at Noctis.

“You may have grown some impressively pathetic stubble over the last few weeks, but sometimes you act like you’re five, Noctis. Let them go with her; I trust Iris. I trust my people.”

“… I trust them too.”

That seemed to knock the wind out of the mercenary and the people of her merry little band around her. Some of these men and women had actively fought, probably _killed_ Lucians under the command of the emperor.

They were all still waiting for the hand of justice to give them what they deserved. Hearing the king of Lucis say that he trusted the people who had killed his father, butchered his entire council and then made a show of the rest of his country was definitely not something any Niffs seemed to have expected. Even those who usually hung with other Lucians who knew that Noctis didn’t just tolerate them seemed to be rather surprised by this claim.

Noctis raised both hands. Laughed awkwardly. “That’s the truth. You all, every single Niff here in Lestallum. You all know what to atone for. You all aren’t beating around the bush when it comes to admissions of guilt. Just last week when that pair from Accordo who had somehow made their way to this continent and then fought their way to Lestallum started yelling at you guys, you all just bowed your heads and said that you knew that. Said that if they wanted justice that you’d be there. Hell, some even said that if they wanted a death for a death, then so be it. Either you’re just as skilled at manipulating us as Ardyn was in your government, or you’re sincere. I’d like to believe you’re being sincere. Because Niflheim was the first country to go, what would you gain from lying to and manipulating us? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. So I’d say, no matter how guilty you all are, you’ve earned my trust at least. I can’t speak for my country’s people, mind. But once the sun rises again and we all go back to our homes… well. I want to help you guys.”

The mercenaries all bowed.

Aranea and Loqi didn’t. They just stuck their heads together and started urgently discussing something; Aranea’s eyes wide and Loqi’s face pale.

Ravus too had had his secrets whenever it came to Niflheim as a whole. Most people who had a rank within the army usually reacted like that, and he watched how Loqi furiously shook his head and seemed to tell Aranea ‘no’ for whatever it was they were discussing.

Ironically it was him who eventually came forward. In just a few days the group bound for Insomnia was going to leave. Iris, with the Niffs who had volunteered and the best hunters that wanted to see the crown city. They all agreed to unite under the title Glaives rather than Crownsguard, because it had always been the Kingsglaive who had been sent for missions like these. Never the hunters, very very rarely the Crownsguard. It would be the Glaives who would retake the city after the Kingsglaive had had a hand in its downfall.

“A word, if I may.”

Noctis nodded.

“Aranea told me that the High Commander never quite managed to say as much. Frankly, neither her nor me are exactly sure how to… say that.” The Niff looked nervous. “But yeah. It’s… long overdue. The higher ups, especially the High Commander himself… we’ve been complicit in things worse than the usual war crimes.”

Human experimentation.

Noctis listened with nothing short of terror as Loqi started first hesitantly, then urgently talking about the MT project. He claimed repeatedly that he didn’t know everything about it, and that a lot of information about it had died with Ravus, the emperor and likely the chief of said project. Loqi finished at some point, looking almost deflated.

“There’s one other thing. And… it concerns your friend.”

There was a reason Prompto was that good with technology of any kind, but a natural when it came to Niff machinery. A supposed part of the project, snatched by a Lucian intruder who had been sent to gather something on the project. How they had escaped with an infant, how said infant had offered absolutely nothing information-wise – how should it have? Therefore it was given to a family that would take good care of it, let it grow up like a normal person.

A normal person who grew up under the name of Prompto Argentum.

“I asked his parents. They had no idea what it was all about, but they did tell their son to keep the barcode tattoo hidden. That’s how we… well, the military in general, tracked you and your party. A production code, a production number. That’s all machines need to track MTs. We… honestly, Aranea and I think that Ardyn had his hands in how a single Lucian spy managed to infiltrate a high-security Niff facility. Yes, there were no human guards. But the technology… but anyway. I don’t have any more information on this than you do, and I think it’s safe to assume we’ll never learn the full scope of it.”

After all, the first production facility had been completely levelled. Aranea had searched for Verstael Besithia, for any information on it. But other than sadly sparking machines and rubble there had been nothing left, and Ravus absolutely refused to talk about it.

Another mystery that died with the High Commander.

Loqi shook his head. “That’s why… well, we think that maybe you ought to reconsider whether you trust the Niff militaries or not. Anyway. That’s all.”

He turned to leave, but Noctis reached forwards. Grabbed his arm and held him in place.

“You said you guys don’t know everything for certain. I trusted Ravus despite the clear secrets he kept, secrets that affect a lot more than I can probably begin to guess and will never know now that he’s dead. But you guys are alive. I’m alive, too. Out there’s only darkness and Daemons. We agreed to work together until the sun rose. I said I’d love to help your country rebuild. That point still stands. But we’re… allies. So thank you. Thank you for returning my trust and telling me about this.”

The Niff only cracked a sad smile at him.

“Man, the High Commander was right. You _are_ a trusting fool sometimes. But… thank you. No.” Loqi freed himself from Noctis’ grip and turned around. He immediately bowed, on one knee and everything. That was a proper bow reserved for royalty, something that Noctis had always hated. But right now it didn’t bother him as much as it normally did. “Your Majesty Noctis Lucis Caelum CXIV. As representative of Niflheim, I, Loqi of House Tummelt, who holds Muspell for the Empire of Niflheim… I give you my deepest gratitude for this display of kingly wisdom. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.”

Noctis knew that the Niffs were people he could trust. Perhaps never as much as he could trust the Lucians he grew up with… but he could trust them. Perhaps they could bridge the rift between their countries, or at least begin bridging it. That one day in the future their countries could go hand in hand. Something that Prompto would agree to.

He needed to talk to his friend next, after he saw the Insomnia group off.


	26. Applaud! Your play continues!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> times you dont want to receive a phone call: friday, 11pm  
> phone calls you dont want to receive on a friday at 11pm: "yeah, co-worker x is in hospital, co-worker y is still not in germany, i absolutely cannot make it over to (town) to help you out; youre all alone on saturday. close the store for 45. thats what the boss said. so kick everyone out and get your 45 minute break. we cant do it any other way. sorry"
> 
> so yeah i kinda, have been, covering shifts and replaying the zero escape games since theyre No Effort and No Proper Input other than escape rooms  
> and the english voice acting for 999 and vlr allowed me to just.. put the games on auto and listen in (couldnt do that on 3ds vlr back when bc... we only got japanese voice acting)

Blissful silence. There was no other way to describe this. Finally, finally the king had shut up. There was no constant noise coming from nearby Daemons. If he wanted to he could have just _left_ and never come back, perhaps on a fruitless journey across the land to find the missing stars and moon.

And then the silence was interrupted.

It was an agonising pain that shot through him, but the rest of his body was already numb. He couldn’t move, couldn’t open his eyes. Couldn’t _breathe._ It felt like something was scorching him from the insides. Like the sun had come to wreak vengeance upon him for having a hand in his disappearance.

Dully, somewhere in the back of his mind, he realised that he was either dying or this was what healing without the powers of the Crystal at their side felt like. He did realise that the hole in his body was closing up. But still he couldn’t move, couldn’t say anything.

He remained trapped in that lightless place.

* * *

The fever was back, but it was a minor inconvenience by now. Just another part of him, just as his glasses were.

Had been.

Ardyn had definitely not been lying when he said that his vision would improve sooner or later. The fact that it happened so soon after the Accursed had said that set off a deep-seated panic within him, but Ignis only had to take a few deep breaths to get that under control. It would remain somewhere in the back of his mind, but panicking would not help—it might just accelerate the inevitable. That was what this situation was. It was something he could never get out of, the blood on his hands completely notwithstanding.

Cor had been in a situation he couldn’t escape from. Whether it was Ignis or Ardyn or one of the nearby Daemons that did him in, unless the Glaives had miraculously found him within ten minutes or less, the Marshal would have died. Still, Ignis could have intervened but he had let his anger and disappointment get the better of him. Still merely thinking about the fact that a handful people knew about Noctis’ fate made his blood broil in the worst ways.

But Ravus…

If he were to put everything on the hypothetical scale, it would be rather clear that Ravus had absolutely not deserved this. He’d been rational, it had been three years, he knew the horrors the Scourge wreaked upon those who were unfortunate enough to come into contact with it. Once it became clear that Ignis was not going to be swayed he had done the next best thing – sending off his former ally from Altissia with a bow and a prayer like the Oracles of old had done with their companions if anything happened to them. Opposing all of that was the almost ridiculous claim of ‘self-defence’, barely tipping the scales in favour of what Ignis had done.

The weight that broke the scale entirely was once again Noctis’ fate. Ignis didn’t know whether Ravus had known. If he had, _good riddance._ If he hadn’t…

Then again, he had no reference, nothing to compare this to. Surely there were innocents on the opposing side of the war, but as far as every single Lucian, Ignis included, was concerned, the Niffs deserved the suffering under the guise of justice. They had actively helped in the city, or had let their megalomaniac leaders do as they pleased without raising a rebellion once.

Of course it wasn’t as black and white as he liked to see it, but there was absolutely nothing left for him to consider there. The finer nuances of warfare and the warmonger’s people’s accountability were not something that mattered any longer. People who had been on opposing sides in the war now walked hand in hand, united under a common foe.

A common foe who Ignis had instead reached for.

And this was where it had gotten him.

Cursed by the bloodline he swore to protect, if the sharp headaches were any indication; cursed by the god who had caused all of this in the first place. All the bridges had been burnt at long last.

Ignis stopped dead in the desolate wasteland that was Insomnia. The cold dread almost overpowered his fever, and a cold shiver went down his spine as the realisation settled in slowly, steadily, like a fluid from an IV drip.

This was _precisely_ how things had started for Ardyn. A single event had effectively caused him to deteriorate from whoever he had been before all this to a man who killed the Oracle Lunafreya without a wince, without even as much a _shred_ of a guilty conscience. A man who had orchestrated the grand downfall of the most powerful empire since the days of Solheim; the very empire he helped lay the foundation for, which experienced its explosive upswing in technology thanks to him and the fact that the immortal have all the time in the world to learn what was necessary. But he had started as someone with a public position, someone who loved what he was doing – only to be stabbed in the back quite literally.

The gods had abandoned Ardyn and left him to his torment after they told him what his role in the story was.

The gods had abandoned Ignis and decided to either get rid of him by making him choose something drastic or by slowly but steadily turning him into a mindless creature that could no longer interfere with destiny.

He let out a wheeze. Or, at least he thought it was a wheeze. It took him a moment to realise it was a laugh that was also half a sob somehow, a ghastly noise that he hadn’t considered his body capable of. He bent over, only to have a sharp pain shoot through his body.

Gods, his stomach hurt. There was the ghost of a blade still embedded in it, he felt it when he moved, when he lay down. Ravus’ last gift to him was somehow putting a curse on him – or this was Lunafreya’s only way of telling him that he did the wrong thing. Whatever the case, it was less than favourable, especially considering that he was still fully prepared to go down screeching and kicking and flailing. Even if he turned into a Daemon. As hilariously deranged as that sounded, his mother had shown him that he could still keep his sanity together for long enough to remember what he had to do, until he could not take another step.

Maybe his Daemon could torment Ardyn after that.

If Noctis didn’t end the long night before that. Then Ignis would live. Live with his sins. Maybe he’d have to run away.

Somehow becoming the protagonist of one of these idiotic ‘gangster on the run’ books that his father had loved so much was what would happen to him then. Ignis shook his head furiously. No. Not today.

Definitely not ever. He’d make certain he died before the sun returned. After he changed Noctis’ fate.

That was the only choice left for him. He’d never see Noctis on the throne. Would never call him ‘majesty’. After all, that word had long since lost its meaning. He used it for a person who was not king, who did not sit the throne.

Somehow, that was okay. He guessed.

The phantom pain of a sword embedded in his guts vanished.

Damn that Lunafreya.

* * *

Ardyn returned. He never once said where he had gone, and seemed to dodge the question.

The fact that he vanished again soon thereafter and seemed to slink through the streets searching for something was… not comforting in the slightest.

Ignis watched him leave. Then watched him return. Watched him leave. Return. Leave. Return. Leave. A maddening repetition, but at some point Ardyn failed to come back at the same time as he had for ages.

By the time he came back no less than four days had passed, and the man looked rather satisfied with himself for once.

The advisor decided against pressing the issue. Nothing good ever came from that.

* * *

The way Ardyn was watching him, he was starting to come to a few realisations of his own. At least that expression said a lot about it. Ignis stopped dead after he dropped from the building, breaking his fall with the Trident of the Oracle. Whatever it was that Ardyn was thinking right now, he both wanted to know and absolutely did not want to know.

But eventually his curiosity got the better of him. He threw a confused glance into Ardyn’s general direction, and the Accursed reacted. He only shook his head, suddenly back from whatever it was that he had been thinking about.

“Your progress in the last few days has been… astounding, really.”

Ignis shrugged. “I’ve not improved at all.”

Again Ardyn stared at him for a moment before he narrowed his eyes.

“Say, there is something that has been on my mind lately.”

“If I can answer your question, an answer you shall receive, Your Majesty.”

The Accursed paced for a few moments before he once again stopped, stared at Ignis and the Trident of the Oracle, then started pacing again. Whatever it was, it seemed to quite literally make Ardyn go from the ever high and mighty Accursed who murdered without a shred of conscience or humanity back to whoever the hell he had been before he became the Accursed. Those bouts were rare, Ignis had learned, but whenever they did, Ardyn became almost unnaturally… chatty. Not chatty in the way he was normally. There was considerably less cryptic nonsense whenever he spoke like that; it made Ignis think that the immortal Accursed who was dead-set on wiping out his own family was a persona of a sort. It could just be an act, of course – that was always a possibility with Ardyn. He was an actor who had managed to bewitch the rest of the world with his performance, after all. If he just wanted to, he could easily trick Ignis.

But somehow he didn’t believe that. It was similar to how Noctis would start fidgeting around when he was serious about something, it was just like how King Regis usually folded his hands together when he was not exactly telling the truth. Little family quirks. Some that Ignis knew so much that he did not question this for even a split second. It probably ran all the way back to siblings Somnus and Ardyn.

Eventually Ardyn stopped.

“The Blademaster.”

Ignis narrowed his eyes.

“How on good earth did you defeat the last warrior of Lix?”

“… Lix?”

He had the vague feeling that he was supposed to know that name. He knew from context that it was a city, a village, a settlement of some sort at least, and that it had apparently been Gilgamesh’s home at some point. Ardyn crossed his arms.

“A village in Risorath; levelled shortly after my banishment. Every single person who lived there – murdered, for apparent conspiracies against the gods-chosen man called Somnus and the woman by his side the people had started calling Oracle.”

An ancient village.

“A village of… warriors?”

“Mercenaries.”

Ignis shrugged. “I see.”

He told the truth; it had been sheer will and a good amount of luck. The fact that Gilgamesh had lost an arm had worked in his favour, plus his knowledge of how the man fought from what Gladio had told him at the campfire. Ardyn’s expression did not change at all as Ignis retold that tale, though he did leave out the sheer dread he had felt as he made his way to the lowest possible point of whatever the site had been. How he had eventually managed to turn the battle around by using his smaller size and the fact there was a glaring weakness in Gilgamesh’s approach to his advantage, how he had kicked the Blademaster down into the canyon and started the climb back up.

Ardyn closed his eyes when Ignis finished – after all the man knew the rest of the tale. The drive back with the katana stuck in his shoulder, how he had arrived before the Accursed, how he had yanked the sword out and tossed it at the ground.

“… He always knew that a proper tactician would be his downfall.”

“Excuse me?”

The Accursed shook his head. “I knew that man, once upon a lifetime. He always said that while the mercenaries of Lix were almost unbeatable in proper combat, if someone who thought quickly and rationally ever challenged all of them at once that person would win. There was only one warrior in the village he never bested simply because he had the quick tactical thinking that outdid the rest. Granted, that man and his wife, his sister-in-law, every single one of the people who told Gilgamesh that if he were to travel like that warrior had he would wind up stronger than him… They all died when Lix was levelled. Gilgamesh didn’t.”

Which meant he had never defeated the man he had aspired to beat. Instead he had been punished for remaining loyal to someone who had managed to gain said loyalty somehow in the first place. Punishment for being loyal to the Accursed.

Ardyn shook his head and simply walked away.

It only left Ignis with more questions than he would likely ever get answers for. Another riddle in the book with sixteen hundred seals that was Ardyn Lucis Caelum of the Izunia family.

* * *

He was simply standing behind a broken window on one of the upper floors this time. It was still mildly alarming how clear everything was even without his glasses – he had gotten used to the way the world was unfocused in the dark. But now everything was crystal clear. No fuzzy edges, no distant objects that melted into a vague shape that he could no longer recognise until he got closer. If the trees in Insomnia still had leaves, he was fairly certain he would be able to see every single one of these as opposed to the vague green splotches he had seen before the sun set for a final time.

Granted, he had never been an intense case of bad sight. His father had been barely able to see without his, but Ignis managed to walk around without them. He would have never driven a car like this, but if he wanted to he could easily pretend he didn’t need them for a while.

Now he was watching that small group slowly walk into the crown city. He was perfectly able to make out who they were – strangers except for two people.

The worst thing about being able to see them, however, was the fact he saw colour. It was dark. Darkness normally drowned out colour, turned the entire world into a strange greyscale copy of what it looked like during daytime. But now he saw clearly that one of the women in this group wore a dull orange scarf which gradually turned red on both ends of it. He saw that one of the former Kingsglaives, a man he didn’t know the name of, had taken to wearing a dark brown shirt underneath his coat, and the Kingsglaive uniform itself was unbuttoned and rustling slightly as the man moved. Saw how Aranea had changed over the last few years, saw how determined she was despite the fact that she looked like she had just crawled out of her own grave. How pale everyone had gotten – even Gladio.

He didn’t quite know what it was this group of fifteen people was trying to accomplish. Ignis had deliberately told the Daemons nearby to remain on standby.

When he sent a single Ahriman forwards they had all frozen and waited to see what the hell it was going to do. When Ignis released it it followed its instincts and jumped towards them, its wings excitedly buzzing because there were humans here, living creatures that it could try to tear apart. But someone from the back, a young woman who clearly was a Niff just like Aranea was, had raised her gun and shot it down. The gun was even silenced, and the Ahriman fell backwards and burst into a cloud of miasma after a moment where it remained stunned that it had just been shot.

A very precise shot, in fact. It was almost impressive, but then he remembered that most Niffs probably knew more about how to take out Daemons than anyone else on Eos. After all, Ardyn had taught them.

He tried to adjust his glasses – and only ended up with his hand in his face, looking kind of like an idiot.

That was something that always made Noctis laugh when they were just sitting around and Ignis had taken off his glasses for something. The reflex to adjust the glasses was always there, he had tried to ignore it but always failed. Noctis always said that it was endearing to see Ignis doing something that silly, and Ignis always laughed it off. Usually it ended with Noctis gently putting his glasses back where they belonged, most of the time accompanied by a kiss and another laugh.

But now he was standing in the hollow shell of a building, an office of a company he no longer remembered the name of. The people down in the street had stopped and Aranea and Gladio were urgently discussing something.

Ignis barely managed to dodge out of the line of sight when Gladio suddenly turned his gaze upwards.

For a terrifying few seconds he heard his heart hammer in his ears. He wasn’t here for a fight, he had just been curious about what was going on at the city gates. He’d felt that tremor of excitement that had gone through the Daemons there, and then a sharp disconnect as they vanished. Something or someone had made their way into the city, and Ignis had only been curious to see who exactly the suicidal idiots were.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” Gladio was still looking up with narrowed eyes. “Probably a Daemon.”

They were talking about how to proceed. Gladio shot down any kinds of heroics they could be doing. He vehemently refused to let the Niff girl with the gun go off on her own to find the ‘bastard who did the High Commander in’. It seemed she assumed that it had been Ardyn, and he nearly laughed right where he stood. But he remained quiet, his lips glued together and the strange urge to make his position known suppressed. Eventually the gunslinger Niff complied with Gladio, said that he was right and this was stupid. That she wouldn’t stand a chance against whoever killed the High Commander on her own.

“But...” Gladio turned back to look up, into Ignis’ vague direction. Again his heart rate increased – Gladio _had_ seen him after all, hadn’t he? “Well. I hope my gut feeling’s wrong this time.”

Aranea tilted her head quizzically before trying to follow Gladio’s gaze, a sudden emotion in her eyes that even Ignis saw from his hiding place. It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t hatred either. Whatever it was, it was quite literally one of the most terrifyingly intense things he had seen since the day King Regis had said his final words to Noctis before they went off on their merry way.

He held his breath as he waited for the people to leave. They eventually agreed on trying Via Dolorosa rather than the main street that connected to the Via Caelum – not that they would have been able to go that way anyway. A building had finally given in and collapsed not too long ago, the debris had made it nearly impossible to pass through there any longer.

Once they were gone Ignis breathed out slowly, only for a hand to wrap around him.

For a second, he panicked. Then he realised the hand was warm and disgustingly familiar. He twisted himself out of Ardyn’s grip.

“Oh dear. I would have enjoyed you yelling.”

“The time for that is long over, Your Majesty. What… How can I help you?”

Ever since he had started seeing in the dark, he noticed that Ardyn’s eyes were far from normal. In the sunlight he had never really noticed, but in the dark it was fairly obvious how intense his eyes were. That was not the gaze of a human being; but it was not the glare of a Daemon either. It seemed to perfectly oppose Noctis’ deep blue eyes – those always seemed to sparkle with emotions no matter how long he started into them.

Ardyn’s were always hollow. Flat. The fact that they seemed to glow in the dark now that he saw the colour again did not help the fact that Ardyn looked less and less like a human and more like an apparition straight out of a nightmare Ignis had had when he was a kid.

“Aren’t you curious?”

He fought back the urge to shiver. He was, yes, but he was not going to chase these people.

“No, not really.” A lie, delivered completely like a fact that he was just stating. Like he was talking about the weather.

Ignis had been taught how to lie without flinching. After all, an advisor was a prime target for kidnapping and torture to get information out of him. He knew how to stay perfectly still and silent even when the pain overwhelmed him. He knew how to lie without making others believe that he was lying through his teeth. Knew how to undo just about any sort of restraint when all he had was himself and perhaps a plastic card he hid in his sleeves.

“I say, let them do as they please as long as they don’t get too close to the Citadel.”

After all, the Ring of the Lucii was in the Citadel. This was the place that Ardyn was trying to protect in its perfectly pristine state of destruction to rile Noctis up one last time. A final battlefield for… what, exactly? Ardyn had been awfully busy with the bits and pieces of the Old Wall lately. Especially the Rogue, the Fierce and as usual the Mystic.

“Goodness, there’s no need to glare at me like _that._ I was simply wondering if you wanted to see what they were doing. Because I have absolutely no intention of...” Ardyn shrugged and dramatically turned around. “… killing them. They’re maggots. No need to mess with them when the big one is still _at large.”_

Ignis shrugged.

“There is one thing I want to test, however. Whether they can fight or not.”

He did not like where this was going at all. “You know _Gladiolus_ and Aranea can fight.” Somehow, saying his former friend’s full name… hurt.

“And in case you have forgotten, your actions caused the premature abortion of that little test.”

For a split moment he saw Ravus again. The determination on the High Commander’s face. The flashes and sparks of light he so effortlessly conjured up after always relying on Magitek back in Altissia. The way he had jerked underneath Ignis as he drove that dagger…

Ignis gagged. All Ardyn did was shrug again.

“They will find a little surprise on Via Dolorosa. Or rather _beneath_ it. Have a nice day, Ignis!”

He waited until Ardyn was gone and stumbled down the stairs in blind panic. That didn’t sound good at all.

* * *

The Insomnia underground once had been full of stores and shops that led up to every train station. Now there was only water that stood in those hallways, the rancid smell of decay and mould slowly overwhelming everything down here. The flan-types flourished in these places, and the Ahriman-types were infesting everything like the plague they were anyway.

But this hallway was empty. The only thing he heard were his own steps.

He’d sprinted past the people by taking a different entry to the underground. He was now where the entrance in Via Dolorosa eventually connected to, and he had found… absolutely nothing.

Ardyn had said that there was something waiting for the people, but there was nothing. Nothing at all. And that was what truly worried Ignis. Normally these hallways were full of lesser creatures, perhaps even some Goblins and what not that found their ways into these places. There was one part in particular where a Naga had made its nest; the Daemon almost completely filled that hallway and any other Daemon that made its way into there was immediately met with flash of fangs and claws, the slap of a tail, and then nothing, nothing at all. It killed its comrades.

But he only heard his own footsteps echoing in the dark here. There was only brackish water as he trudged onwards.

“ _Why are you even worried?”_ Her fine voice seemed oddly clear – Lunafreya had been silent for a long, long time. King Regis had since fallen silent as well, after ages of the voice getting more and more quiet until he could barely make out anything but a mumble that was occasionally interrupted by a static screech. _“They are not your comrades. As things stand, they are your enemies.”_

She was right, of course, but Ignis still couldn’t shake the feeling that Ardyn had been brewing something up. Something particularly unpleasant. The man liked to announce what he was doing, but this time Ignis had no idea. None.

He continued trudging through the water and almost missed the flans. Noctis hat always hated them with a passion, claiming that he was not a fan of ‘mushy desserts’. They were always a pain to fight, what with their properties; bullets simply got stuck in them, and even a shield could not properly protect one against a creature that had no firm body. Only magic seemed to truly sway these things, something that Noctis and Ignis eventually worked out together. Flasks, a bolt of thunder called forth.

Sometimes when he was alone he wondered why no one ever made him train with the Glaives once they realised he shared that weird affinity for magic that these men and women had. Not that Ignis wanted to warp, but it would have saved him quite a lot of trouble with the magic later on during their journey through Lucis.

He stopped dead.

Something was moving both ahead and behind him. The sound behind him seemed to be the echo of several people sloshing through the horrid stale water. But the sound ahead of him…

“ _Three people behind you. … One ahead of you.”_

“A person?” He was whispering, but Lunafreya said nothing else.

He was expecting a Daemon. There were a few that looked vaguely human enough to be mistaken for one in the dark, but Ignis knew that Lunafreya would never make that mistake. If everyone else on Eos made that mistake – she wouldn’t. She had been extensively trained to know which Daemons looked how, and what their attack patterns were. She was, after all, the Oracle. The only person on Eos who could save people and could grant Daemons a peaceful end compared to how they usually ended when hunters got their hands on them.

But… a person?

“ _No… no, oh gods, what… what is this?”_

The sloshing up ahead was erratic, to say the least. It sounded like whatever, _who_ ever it was was having trouble walking. Ignis had frozen once he caught that noise, and the people behind him stopped for a second too. Then they urgently rushed forwards; he heard the telltale sound of someone summoning a weapon. A _heavy_ weapon.

He didn’t need to turn around to know that whoever the other two were, they were being led by Gladio.

Before any of these people could say anything, he raised a hand. He was trying to see what it was up ahead, but somehow he felt like Lunafreya was trying to shield his eyes. She definitely was choking back something between a sob and a scream in the back of his mind, a sound so awful that it made his head hurt.

The people from Lestallum stopped.

At the same moment he _saw._

There were many things Ardyn could have done, especially knowing that eventually someone from Lestallum, likely even one of Noctis’ closer supporters, would arrive in the crown city for some reason. Ignis had sometimes imagined Ardyn ironically procuring an entire banquet of food to welcome these people to his grand capital of darkness; somehow that seemed like something Ardyn would have done. He imagined an entire army of Daemons awaiting them and then simply parting, shooing them into the right direction. A dramatic speech or two, perhaps one of these statues of the Old Wall that Ardyn usually spent his time with. Perhaps as a test run – it was absolutely no secret that he wanted to pit them against Noctis once he came to the city, ready to take down the Accursed and ready to _die_ to bring back the light.

Ardyn had not greeted his guests at the gates. He was not awaiting them anywhere. The underground connection from Dolorosa Via simply ended in what had once been an underground shopping centre, something that was easy to barricade. They were attempting to get there. Just by looking at the skyline of Insomnia and how the buildings had collapsed it was easy to deduce that the other entries to that shopping centre had been buried underneath rubble, one even had chunks of one of the Old Wall standing above it.

This hallway with the water in it and the advertisements for the second season of a TV show that Prompto had been excited about before they left Insomnia on the walls was supposed to be these people’s grave. No headstone where their friends and families would be able to leave flowers at. Just corpses in the ankle-deep water, left to rot away.

Left to become the same thing that was now approaching them.

Ignis caught the wisps that floated about. This was not something he had ever seen before – this thing looked deceivingly _human._ He was staring into the dark, fully aware that he was seeing something the other humans in this place were only _hearing._ He would wind up like this if everything went horribly, horribly wrong. If he spent too much time around Ardyn, if he died before he turned into a Daemon properly.

The wisps seemed to be made of ash rather than fire. Nothing about this was green – everything was strangely dull, in fact. The colour scheme of this Daemon was strangely muted, but Ignis saw exactly what stood out.

That horrid colourful splash, a single tattered piece of cloth that seemed to float about just as the wisps of ash did. Violet, like the twilight that allegedly swallowed up Galahd during clear summer days. A single, stark reminder of devotion being run into the ground. All those pointless deaths.

“ _Why… why?”_

At the same time as Lunafreya whispered that, the other humans saw it as well. He heard their confusion, but still he had his back to them as he watched whatever it was that Ardyn had unleashed here approached them.

“ _This is… so unnecessarily vile… why?”_

“The hell!? That’s... How?”

Gladio and Lunafreya had spoken at the same time, their voices mixing together in his ears. Ignis, with his back still to Gladio, took a deep breath.

“Because the gods of this world stopped caring about most mortals a long, long time ago. What’s a hero in the wake of darkness eternal?”

The people behind him muttered, but still Ignis did not turn around.

“I’m afraid this was a trap set for you. One that… I sprung. We cannot quite make our escape before this thing outruns us and beats us into a bloody pulp as you are surely aware, _Gladiolus,_ but perhaps a momentary truce might get you out alive. Who knows! Perhaps I’ll be the one dying this time.”

He heard the Shield of the King grind his teeth. “When’d you turn into such a bastard...”

And finally he turned around, flashed a wide smile. “Perhaps I’ve always been, and it only took the darkness and the _reanimated corpse of Nyx Ulric being sent to eliminate you_ for you to finally realise that!”


	27. Ah, you don't like the applause?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> two things before i release yall into this chapter
> 
> 1) [LOOK AT THIS, IM STILL KIND OF MILDLY DYING ON THE FLOOR ABOUT THIS](http://wroniec.tumblr.com/post/174630552932/somnus-ardyn-memories-more-idea-x-i-was)
> 
> 2) tu fui, ego eris is hereby officially longer than my previous longest fic, Amaranthus! Which was in crunch mode last year at this time because Episode Prompto was getting closer and closer and my plotline depended on what I THOUGHT Episode Prompto would be. That's not the case with tu fui, mercifully enough. I know a shitload, if not all, is gonna be debunked when Episode Ardyn and the others release next year.  
> Either way.  
> I wanted to say thanks to everyone who's keeping up with this, whether you're commenting or not! It's been a wild ride so far. It's gonna be wild until I finish this; and I'm actually delighted that everyone's been enjoying it so far!

Their paths had not crossed much until they were twelve and thirteen, respectively. They had also immediately started butting heads about the most minor of things, but Ignis at the end of the day always had to admit defeat when it came to Gladiolus Amicitia. Not because the older boy was stronger, no – it was simpler than that. He was higher on the hierarchy than the advisor-in-the-making, plain and simple. Which meant that Ignis had to eventually bow his head and acknowledge the other’s higher standing; after all any good advisor knew how to handle themselves around each and every noble from Lucis, politicians from Accordo, nobles from Tenebrae, Niflheim.

Only when Ignis started training did he get the chance to tell Gladio what he thought most of the time, and people commented on how vicious the advisor could fight. Especially when Noctis was concerned Ignis turned into a berserker, but eventually on the training grounds he and the future Shield started getting along. No need for noble titles, bowing and giving in when they actually started fighting. Everyone was equal on the battlefield was something that Cor taught every trainee of the Crownsguard; Gladio and Ignis were not exempt from that. An enemy did not care about social standing, about how many times someone lower insulted someone higher. The weak paid for their weakness, and the strong might live to fight another day.

Kind of morbid, now that he thought about it.

But it had eventually crystallised as truth. The weak did pay for their weakness, whether they were people from Niflheim on the run from their country in the dark or Lucian nobles pompously resting on the laurels of the peace treaty. And the strong, they stood here. Three beside Gladio. Ignis in the middle. That horrible _thing_ that once was a member of the Kingsglaive behind him.

It was no secret that Gladio and Ignis still had their differences. It would have been impossible to not have them – even Ignis and Noctis had them, Noctis and Prompto. It was human nature, as ironic as it sounded in the back of his Scourge-infected mind. They’d kept their bickering to a minimum, sometimes they even genuinely enjoyed having the other around. But at the end of the day they were very much on opposing sides about something they both had strong opinions about; Noctis and how to handle him. Gladio seemed to think that he needed a bit of rough love every once in a while, a head-washing when he was depressed. Ignis was regularly accused of coddling Noctis too much. Every once in a while they butted heads, often violently – and the game went back to the first step. An endless loop of getting along, having disagreements, the mood getting worse and worse until they lashed out at each other and going back to getting along.

It worked, after all. There would have never been any problems in court or meetings, even when tensions were at their highest. Ignis’ ability to keep an icy calm infuriated Gladio, yes, but as Shield of the King it was his duty to support his king just as much as the advisor was supposed to.

Gods, he wanted to scream. Tell the Shield that Noctis had been born to _die,_ tell him that the man who constantly irritated him to a point where they had to fight it out was supposed to be the royal replacement, tell him that Cor had _known_ and that there were probably even more people who knew. Wanted to sink to his knees and confess that he was definitely going mad, definitely losing his humanity, all because he did not want to give the gods their tribute.

But there was nothing to be said. That spark of recognition and mild horror once Gladio saw Ignis’ face properly now was enough.

“Shit, man. Shit, you’re actually...”

Ignis only shrugged.

He was fairly certain that Ardyn was betting on Ignis either getting in between these people and this _creation_ , or on him taking it out before the people got there and him challenging Gladio to a battle to the death. Ignis was not feeling either of these and instead crossed his arms.

“Now then. Pleasantries such as calling me a bastard and me avoiding calling you a meathead all aside… I am here to make an offer of some sort.”

Truth be told, he was absolutely mortified by what he was seeing. Ardyn had been so deliberately scarce these days, and Ignis had only just started to wonder where the bodies of all officials had gone. King Regis would have been taken care of properly somehow, but everyone else… Those people remained conspicuously absent; their bodies that had littered the Citadel gone and the stench of rotting flesh gone within a few months.

Nyx Ulric being here like this however told him what had happened. It was absolutely no secret that Ardyn loved messing around when he was in one of his worse moods, but this was almost as shocking as staring into the face of a talking Daemon all over again.

“Whatever this is, it has no right to exist the way it does.” It felt wrong calling someone he knew once just a thing, but that was what the Scourge did. It turned living beings into things that only acted mindlessly, without consideration for their own well-being. Kind of like Ignis already did, just without the monster transformation. “It is true we are on opposing sides, and theoretically I should be standing beside _it_ right now. But as long as a shred of clarity remains, I will not let this affront to nature go and shred someone apart. So a temporary truce to take this down together. Then we can tear each other apart if you’d like.”

Gladio definitely picked up on how Ignis had said ‘clarity’ rather than ‘humanity’. There were many things to be said about the Shield of the King, but calling him stupid was one of the things that Ignis would not have picked as insult. Situationally unaware, brash, often rude and insensitive perhaps, but not stupid.

“You’re absolutely aware of...”

“Do we _really_ have the time to be having this conversation, _Gladiolus?”_

The Glaives all drew their weapons as Ignis turned to look at his former comrade, but all Gladio did was narrow his eyes.

As if to prove his point, a low gurgle echoed through the underground hallway – the Glaives all cringed and turned to look at what was behind Ignis.

“And who’s to say you aren’t… controlling this?” One woman with a spear in her hands took a cautious step backwards, apparently ready to lunge forward if she deemed it necessary to. Ignis only shook his head again.

“I’m _fairly_ certain you’ve at least seen me once or twice, Glaive. Before the fall, I mean.” He gestured at his own face, trying to keep calm and not let this irrational nagging urge to laugh get the best of him. “Which means you certainly do know that this is not what I used to look like. Beyond a certain… _level_ of strength I can do just about nothing and they attack me just as they attack you.”

It was a lie. It was a hideous, complete and utter lie. He had since learned how to pressure even Deathclaws into obeying his whims, even Red Giants were starting to often do as he said. Just as Ardyn had claimed, the Scourge was making him stronger – it also cost him his sleep, made him unable to eat without nausea most of the times. Strength in exchange for weaknesses.

But this had Ardyn’s handwriting all over it. It had his magic signature all over it. Ignis’ attempts at controlling Nyx would have bounced off like a bouncy ball, would have ricocheted off the walls and hit him in the face, made him keel over and be left defenceless. It wasn’t the strength that kept him from controlling things – the only thing that really kept him was his own inexperience and Ardyn overruling some commands.

Another gurgle. Ignis felt something that made his body bristle. It took him a moment to remember how he had always been most sensitive to magic, and whatever was going on behind him definitely did not sound or feel like something good. Thus he offered Gladio a hand.

“Bash my skull in after that to _free me from my torment,_ or whatever. But for now a ceasefire.”

The Glaives urged Gladio to not fall for the enemy.

But all Gladio did was stare at Ignis – they had spent a lot of time together. No matter how little they thought of each other, there had always been a certain respect between them. Even now he saw how conflicted the Shield was, despite Ignis being fairly certain that Gladio was the one who urged Noctis to break the bonds between them. One of the few people who did know about what was going on between the prince and the advisor, one of the few people who Noctis always told the truth to, no matter how many times Gladio made things worse with his insensitive streak.

They shook hands. Slowly. The Glaives sounded less than pleased, but before Gladio could tell them to shut up, the magic that Ignis had felt dispersed.

Fire.

It was always fire; fire that ran along the walls and that cut off their escape route. Violet and blue as opposed to the green that Ignis used.

* * *

There were several things that made him think as he bounced off a wall to escape a ball of fire. It splashed across the wall, sizzled violently in the water.

And continued burning.

That was the first thing that made him suspicious. Not even Daemonic fire continued burning in water. There was only one instance where fire acted like this, but that was so far in the past that he had trouble remembering it properly. Something about the Ring of the Lucii, he realised as he heard a scream and a splash and then nothing.

Three Glaives, and all three of them useless in enclosed space. As much as he hated Ardyn, somehow he had to admit that he was grateful that the man always made certain to overwhelm Ignis whenever they trained. Claustrophobic trips into the underground had made him rather good at using the space to his advantage. The Glaives on the other hand were mostly used to the wide wilderness of Lucis; those from Accordo would have been able to react well enough in here. But… nothing. Obviously they had been expecting Flans in here, just as Ignis had.

The next thing was the fact that somehow they were fighting _Nyx Ulric._ The man who Ardyn had said died a heroic death after putting on the Ring of the Lucii, who had ensured that Lunafreya and his friend got out of the city. Over three years ago Nyx Ulric had died the night Insomnia fell, yet here he was. It was true that the Scourge often used bodies as host, but there was no way to infect dead tissue. After all, it was dead. Unless Nyx had been sick when he died, there were precious little ways for this to take root within him and reanimate his corpse.

“ _You are forgetting one thing. Ardyn Izunia has not once played fair.”_ Lunafreya’s voice was soft, barely louder than the sizzling and sparking of flame that burned even in fire. _“We cannot be certain he has not… interfered with this. Has not meddled with it. It is true that dead and uninfected tissue remains like that as far as we know, but...”_

She didn’t exactly say what she thought. He had assumed she had left as soon as King Regis had taken his place somewhere in the back of his mind, but now she was back and she sounded like she was on the verge of crying. That was another thing that made Ignis think. Why was this affecting her so much? True, apparently Nyx had lost his life trying to get her out of the city, but what was the life of a lowly grunt like a member of the Kingsglaive to the holiest of holy Oracle of Tenebrae?

She almost seemed to be more affected by this than the death of her own brother.

Which made him wonder if there wasn’t a certain amount of guilt involved. Cor’s death haunted him, yes, but eventually he had been able to say that he wouldn’t have been able to stop his death even if he had not fought the man. Ravus on the other hand cost him more sleep than he was willing to admit. Perhaps Nyx and Lunafreya were in a similar situation. Perhaps Noctis would have become her Cor, something that could not be avoided, whereas Nyx was the one she directly had her hands in and therefore he warranted a lot of regret.

A ball of hissing blue fire splashed against Gladio’s shield. The man grunted and Ignis snapped his attention back to the situation on hand.

The blue fire itself was rather puzzling, too. He’d never heard of something like that.

“Fuck! This isn’t normal!”

“Mhm. An astute observation.”

“Don’t gimme that shit, Ignis! The hell’s going on here!?”

He ground his teeth for a moment and then simply proceeded to shake his head. “If I knew I certainly would not have let you and your little group catch me standing around pondering on what was going on.”

It had been so long, but they fell into the same rhythm almost immediately. No matter how horribly they got along at the time, they always made certain to not let that interfere with the battle. They could want each other dead, but they united under their common cause – usually Noctis. Or sometimes hunger. Either way, Gladio took a step forwards, Ignis all but cartwheeled behind him, and just a split second later another fireball connected with the shield.

“And what happened to your analysis skills?”

It seemed kind of odd for someone as high-strung in battle as Gladio to let an enemy stand behind him. Indeed, it would have been so _delightfully_ easy to simply jab the Trident of the Oracle back into his back. Do what Ardyn had said after Cor’s death – send the Shield back to Lestallum piece by piece. A hand in the morning. Half a leg in the afternoon. An ear in the evening. Bloody chunks and torn fingers the next morning.

Ignis covered his mouth with his free hand. Whatever image his mind was conjuring up, it definitely wasn’t easy on his stomach. For once he was grateful he barely ate these days simply because he didn’t need it any longer.

“Need to. Get closer,” he choked out eventually, barely audible over the hiss of crackling flame. He so desperately wanted the image of burnt chunks of flesh being tossed over the walls around Lestallum out of his head.

“Kinda hard with the fire burning in the water.”

Ignis took a deep breath through his nose. “Then we can’t do anything, genius.” As long as he didn’t hold the Trident of the Oracle like a proper weapon… For a second he thought he heard Lunafreya tell him that he deserved worse than that. But just for a second; then it was back to imagining these godawful things that were more intrusive than the urge to run away.

Then Ignis paused. There was a pretty obvious solution to this issue. Just like when he had encountered Iris – this was a rather similar situation. He’d deliberately kept his distance to Iris, mostly out of the fear that she would somehow get to him. Managed to drag him back kicking and screaming.

He’d ensured that there was no way she could get close to him. Daemons did the trick, but he had also used magic.

Ignis narrowed his eyes. The hallway was filled with plumes of fire burning in the water, creeping along the walls. It looked like a sentient being, bright and blue and definitely not like something he had ever expected to see. It was Daemonic in nature, yes, but there was something else. Something that throbbed almost aggressively in the back of his head just as King Regis and Lunafreya usually did. He’d dealt with similar lesser cases of Daemons before. Ones that kept their distance between their prey and themselves, and used magic to batter them from afar.

Those were usually rather fragile when confronted directly.

“… You’re using a hunter-issued light-enhanced sword.”

“No shit, Sherlock. I ain’t putting it away ‘cause it bothers your fucked up body.”

“Not what I meant, Gladiolus.” It didn’t bother him. Yet. He knew eventually the mere presence of a weapon like this would bother him. “This might just be conjecture, but if my theory is correct, we are dealing with a long-distance mage.”

Gladio’s grip on his shield and sword fastened a little. Ignis made a point in using terminology that he had overheard people use in the wild. Glaives and hunters and Crownsguard, and technically he should not have known that.

“We can’t exactly close in on him, though.”

“Use your brain, Gladio! I certainly cannot, but you can throw your weapons and immediately call them back to your side.”

Another ball of flame. And another. They were rapid, and rather huge to boot. Not even Ignis managed to conjure up something like that, and the fire was starting to make it hard to breathe in this hallway. They needed to do something now, or run now. Gladio noticed that too and considered his options. His comrades were dead and he was standing there with his enemy behind his back.

“I’m not going to toss my weapon. I’ll be defenceless and I trust you about as far as I can throw you.”

“Which would be quite a distance.”

“Malnourished smartass. Throw your weapon too or I’m bowing outta this one.”

He knew what Gladio was trying to do. Still, there was only one answer he could give right now. “… Fine.”

Ignis’ mind was racing when he corrected his stance behind Gladio. Once again that horribly intrusive thought of ‘skewer him to death and send him to Lestallum as provocation or cry for help’ popped up in the back of his head, but once again he battled the strange urge down. Eventually he would lose that ability, and he knew that his downfall had inevitably begun. Ardyn had said precious little about the early onset of a Scourge infection, and Ravus had offered precious little information either. If Ignis managed to walk away from Gladio alive and in one piece, he’d make certain to get two answers out of the Accursed.

One, what the hell this thing using Nyx Ulric’s face was supposed to be and if there were more like that.

Two, if the urge to tear human beings into pieces with his own bare hands was something he would have to deal with until he either died or turned into a Daemon.

For a split moment they looked at each other. Gladio looked _angry,_ and Ignis was fully aware that he looked more like a walking corpse than anything else. Gladio’s tan was still there, though he looked a lot paler than he had back when they had spent most of their time outside. It definitely didn’t look healthy, and Ignis knew that some people with paler complexions had started looking like ghosts.

But for a split moment they looked at each other, and for a split moment the fact that they had gone through hell together flared up again. That was a bond that they couldn’t exactly get rid of, no matter how many times they almost brutally attacked one another until one went down and admitted defeat. No matter how many times they wound up patching each other up, no matter how many battles they lost or won together with Noctis and Prompto. Every hunt. Every trek across the countryside for an ingredient, a certain supposedly great spot for a photo, every whim of the king, every little bit of nature. Every MT and Niff soldier, every drop ship, every person who had fled Insomnia and did not know what happened to their relatives.

Then they tossed.

Ignis didn’t even wait to see if they hit their target. All of a sudden he bolted forwards, got as much distance between Gladio and himself. No matter their bond, they were on opposing sides of what could be called a war. A war between the Accursed and the King of Light, and Ignis had made his choice and thus wound up here, no matter his intentions. As far as Gladio knew he had been seduced by some sort of promise of power, was being controlled, had gotten himself infected with a sickness that Noctis was supposed to wipe out.

Ignis lunged forwards, nearly fell over his own feet as the flames sizzled out with a violent hiss. He grabbed the Trident of the Oracle from where it had hit its target, the shimmering residue of a weapon being recalled still there. Not a moment too late he managed to turn himself around and brought his weapon up.

With a loud clang the broadsword connected with the trident, and Ignis staggered backwards.

The moment was gone. If he had been just a moment too late, he would have lost a limb, if not his head.

“Nice try, Gladio.”

“Sneaky little _rat_.”

Ignis took a few hurried steps backwards, making a point in keeping eye contact with the Shield of the King. He was back in his idle pose with his weapons drawn, the sword slung over his shoulder and the shield facing forwards.

“I don’t quite know what you were expecting. We’ve travelled together quite a bit. I knew from the moment you sad that I would have to throw my weapon that this is what you were hoping to do. But I’m afraid I can’t let you behead me here.”

The way to Via Dolorosa lay behind him. Ahead of him was Gladiolus and the three corpses of the Glaives who had tried to protect their protector. Ignis was in Gladio’s way, the fact that he was a traitor to the crown and therefore deserving of an execution notwithstanding. He carefully adjusted his stance with the Trident of the Oracle to match Gladio’s fake idle pose.

“Well then, we seem to be having a spot of trouble here. I am in your way. And I have no desire to turn you into mush.”

“I’d _fucking love_ to see you try that.”

“Irrelevant.” Ignis waved a hand through the air before putting it back on his weapon. “We are in a quite similar position as we were in earlier. And once again, I offer you a… compromise.”

“Yeah? Shove it up your ass, then.”

“You don’t quite get your position in all of this, do you?” Ignis shook his head. “You’re on enemy territory. The _heart_ of the enemy’s territory.”

Now that the strange presence was gone, he was certain that if he called for them, the flans that previously spent their time in these hallways would return if he just snapped his fingers. There were scorch marks on the walls, and Gladio looked around with narrowed eyes. He probably didn’t see all that well in here, and he was keeping his light off for the time being. Whether it was broken or not, Ignis didn’t know.

“I’m offering you free leave. I’ll let you get to Via Dolorosa and reconvene with your other allies. I’ll even let you get your… fallen comrades. In return, you let me go.”

Gladio growled. “Can’t let traitors to the crown get away. Kind of in my job description.”

Ignis sighed. “As Shield of the King your duty is to protect your liege and follow his orders.” The older man flinched – and Ignis knew he had won the argument. “Knowing Noctis, his orders to you likely weren’t ‘execute any traitor you come across’ or ‘get your dumb ass stuck in a trap with your enemy’. Your orders are to _return alive_ , aren’t they? Whether you kill me or not in the ensuing battle we would have, doesn’t matter. But you know better than most that a fight I will put up will be a brutal one. One that might leave you crippled and unable to do your own duty. The duty you fought so hard to prove yourself for. All that trouble you went through with the Blademaster – gone to waste because you wanted to get a piece of me. Are you _really_ prepared to cause yourself that grief? Make your sister upset?”

“ _He will return to Lestallum. Will tell what he saw. What you said. It will break Noctis’ heart even further.”_

But Ignis ignored Lunafreya’s voice. Instead he started Gladio down, whose glare was wavering. Then the Shield flicked his gaze backwards to where the Glaives’ bodies were still floating in the water.

Then the sigh of defeat that Ignis wanted to hear. Thus they both sheathed their weapons, and Ignis walked past Gladio.

He had an Accursed to find, and those intruders from Lestallum to ignore.

* * *

Whatever this was, it was unsettling to say the least. He had not expected this to be that easy. Normally Ardyn was as slippery as an eel trying to get out of Noctis’ hands as they discussed whether it was dangerous to consume or not.

Having managed to grab the man and pin him to a door was just about the last thing Ignis expected, but he was not going to let that gut feeling of something being extremely wrong get to him. He needed answers, and he needed them now.

He’d watched from afar as Gladio found Aranea’s group and how eventually they met the handful people who still lived in Insomnia against all odds. The people of the underground, people who had no idea that the Accursed was amongst the Daemons that had taken over their home. After that he had immediately taken off, had all but stormed into the Citadel to find Ardyn. The door he was pinning the Accursed against was the door to the throne room, a room that Ignis had still barely set foot in. It felt wrong.

Ardyn was just giving him an amused grin. “My, my. You look like you’ve seen a _ghost.”_

Ignis merely narrowed his eyes and made certain that he was not giving Ardyn even an inch. He knew that if the man decided it was time to leave then he would just warp out of his grasp anyway. Noctis had done the same a few times, and allegedly King Regis had done the same as well when he had been younger. “I want answers.”

“Oh? So the commoner grovelling in the dirt for _years_ finally worked up the courage to raise his head rather than bow it? The Scourge makes you mortals suicidally bold. But I’m quite afraid I refuse to give answers in such a… compromised situation.”

Ignis snarled at him. “You’re fucking _immortal!”_

“Doesn’t mean I enjoy being torn apart by a dog with rabies.” Suddenly Ardyn’s tone had changed from amused to cold. “So, either you let go or I’ll demand my movement freedom back with force. The last person to try to physically restrain me was torn apart. I can’t quite say I’d like to have you torn into shreds quite yet, but I’m fairly certain you _don’t necessarily need your arms._ Are we clear, Scientia?”

A long pause. “… Yes, Your Majesty.” And with that he let go of the Accursed, who simply proceeded to brush some dust that wasn’t there off his coat.

For a few minutes they stood there in silence, and then Ardyn moved again. He opened the door, and walked into the throne room.

Ignis felt his blood rush into his face. He was angry, he was upset. But the fact that he couldn’t bring himself to talk into this room was because of the hot, intense shame he felt. He’d betrayed every oath he had ever made except for the one that he would protect Noctis. He wasn’t standing next to him. But this was necessary, he tried to console himself. Over and over. His mad mantra that kept him from completely losing his mind. As long as Noctis was alive in the end his actions were justified. Even if history would disagree. There’d be the King of Light, the brave hero who saved their realm. There’d be stories about how the last members of the Fleuret line stood beside the Chosen. Stories about how the whole planet united under his banner and fought against the dark. There wouldn’t be a mention of him as Noctis’ childhood friend. No mention of him as the one who made certain he did not collapse from malnourishment.

He’d be the traitor forever in the pages of history.

And thus he stepped into the throne room. Its silence was absolute, choking.

“Answers, he demands!”

Ardyn was standing in front of the throne, with his back to Ignis. Whatever he was looking at, Ignis couldn’t see from down here. There were only the elaborate and elegant decorations around the throne here anyway. The place the crystal had been in before King Mors had moved it was empty, completely and absolutely empty.

“Well then, I’m in a good mood. I’ll forgive you your grave transgression against _royalty_ and humour you. Ask away!”

For a moment he considered asking politely. Somehow, he thought, it might not get him answers. Ardyn seemed to be enjoying how riled up Ignis was, and he was going to use that to his advantage.

“What in the absolute _fuck_ was that in the underground pathway to Via Dolorosa?”

Indeed, Ardyn quivered for a second, obviously enjoying this. That looked like a laugh he wasn’t trying to let out, but as soon as he turned around his expression was infuriatingly calm. “Nyx Ulric.”

“No, that wasn’t Ulric. Ulric _died_ over three years ago, during the night Insomnia fell to the empire. Unless you were keeping his body frozen somewhere it should have rotted long ago. What on good earth was that?”

Ardyn rolled his eyes. “You both impress and disappoint constantly. Yes, Ulric is dead. Yes, he did die exactly that day. No, I was not keeping his body frozen.”

“So what...”

“Come on now, Ignis. You’re definitely intelligent. Stop playing _dumb_ and _think._ What happened when you and that brute tossed your weapons?”

Ignis didn’t even want to know how Ardyn knew about that. But maybe that was a hint in itself.

Ardyn had not been present. He’d likely been standing on top of a building and watched Aranea’s group as they proceeded through the streets. That, or he had simply returned to the Citadel laughing to himself, giving the statue of the Mystic a pat on the leg as he passed them by in the Citadel courtyard. How would he know what Gladio and Ignis had done?

“He… _It_ vanished. No body. Not even… the usual miasma Daemons burst into.” He’d been too busy lunging forwards to get to his weapon, but now that he thought about it...

“Precisely. So, was what you fought _truly_ a Daemon? I know you tend to immediately assume the first thing you see to be the truth, but do try to use your braincells for a second there. You were stressed. So were these Glaives. You felt a familiar power up ahead, one you usually feel when dealing with Daemons. So, you assumed it was a Daemon and left it at that.”

Ignis stared at Ardyn with blank eyes. He understood what the Accursed was getting at, but the truth was… honestly not something he had an explanation for.

“Now, you’re wondering why I go through _so much trouble_ to simply leave an image behind?”

“… Yes.”

Ardyn’s magic. Of course. It was steeped in the powers of the Scourge, near indistinguishable from it at this point. If someone with a sensitivity to Scourge powers was approached by Ardyn in one of his glamours or something that he had conjured up… Suddenly he saw Ravus at the Altar of the Tidemother again. Ignis nearly slammed his hand against his forehead.

Of course. That was how Ravus had seen through Ardyn appearing under the guise of Gladio – Ignis himself had never had a sensitivity for Daemonic energy and therefore fallen for it hook, line and sinker, but Ravus was blood of the Oracle. Of course he’d react to it. Of course he’d know something about Gladio was wrong; perhaps Ravus’ approach when they had found the Regalia again was something the High Commander had planned to make certain whether Noctis’ companions carried traces of the Scourge or not.

“Simple curiosity.”

“You’ve got to be _joking.”_

Illusory magic defied the laws of physics. That was how the blue fire had burned in the muddy water, how to had crept across the walls like a sentient being. It had been sentient in a sense.

“Oh no, really not. I was hoping I could make the fire green to keep up the illusion, but alas something prevented me from doing that.”

Ignis shook his head. “Beg your pardon?”

Something about the fire had felt off. Ardyn shrugged. “Nyx Ulric died holding the full power of the Ring of the Lucii. Attempting to conjure up the image of a dead person always uses parts of their essence that returned to the energy flow of Eos. Thus there were certain things I could not… touch. Change. True, I managed to twist his appearance to keep up the illusion of a Daemon that looked like Nyx Ulric had risen from the dead. In return, the fire was blue. If I had gone far enough to make him talk, he would have likely begged for death over and over. Because that is what the truly dead do. They beg to be returned to death. Whether that is a conscious decision or simply a side-effect of their energies knowing they are dead, I don’t know. But it has ever been the case with that.”

The man waved his hand around. All of a sudden the energy in the room shifted, and Ignis took a step backwards as all of a sudden Nyx Ulric once again rose from the ground, out of thin air. He was fairly certain that if someone couldn’t see well in the dark – like normal people did – it would look like a Daemon appearing in front of them. A Daemon that just so happened to look like Nyx Ulric, horrifically disfigured by the Scourge and forced to move around.

Except it was Ardyn who held that puppet’s strings.

Ignis blinked and stared at the fake Daemon as it moved about as jankily as humanoid Daemons did. Watched as black fluid ran down the image’s face and fell to the ground. It even left a trail.

Ardyn’s magic powers were impressive as usual. But Ignis kept his gaze locked onto the man who was still waving his hand around. Then eventually he closed his hand and the lowly gurgling thing vanished without a sound, without the telltale burst of miasma that Daemons normally vanished in when they changed location like that.

“Goodness, you tend to be so hard to entertain. You have your answer to your question. Was there anything else you required or me, or were you going to go sulk as you are liable to do when something happens that doesn’t go according to your plan?”

He ignored the provocation. “I said I wanted _answers,_ Your Majesty. Plural. That was one question.”

Ardyn rolled his eyes. “Touché. Well then, second verse, same as the last. Ask away, perhaps I will humour you!”

Ignis thought about how to word this for a while. Ardyn had once again turned his back to the advisor and was likely staring at something on the throne, but Ignis needed to make certain he asked the right thing. Ardyn was so very likely to dodge the question if it was formulated incorrectly. Then again the Accursed dodged questions a lot. Did it really matter in the end?

It mattered to Ignis.

He cleared his throat. “You talked about symptoms of the Scourge recently. How it gives great power at a great price. I was… wondering. Are there cases of people getting the intense desire to… hurt other human beings?”

“Late stage symptoms. Inability to speak. Seizures. Throwing up blood, blood that has long since turned into black grime. Some people never display these because their descent goes from mildly mentally challenged to turning into a Daemon. Those people usually blubber their way madly through their transformation.”

“You aren’t answering my question.”

Ardyn turned around and dramatically threw his hands in the air. “I’m getting there, I’m getting there! Goodness, you are so hard to please, I swear! Either way, there are a few cases where those infected have a side symptom. Have you ever heard of the Tenebraen Spring murders?”

Ignis shook his head.

“Right. A serial killer haunted Tenebrae for exactly one season. For about three to four months, they killed about a hundred people. All in the same way. Their limbs were torn off, and the victims were left to bleed to death in absolute agony. Then, once they were dead, the murderer made a point in tying the left limbs together and threw the right ones out into the open where others would find them. Then they vanished. Not a single trace of the murderer was ever found, but the gruesome murders found their end almost as soon as the seasons changed. True, some people tried to copy them, but the copycat murders were always solved. Those people also always testified that they were simply copying the true one, but the original culprit was never found.”

Ardyn seemed to look for a reason from Ignis, but all the advisor did was stare at him. He had not heard of this before, but then again he was mostly concerned with Lucian history.

“You can trace almost every unsolved serial murderer back to this side symptom. The intense, almost undying urge to tear humans apart, as it usually presents _after_ they turned into Daemons, sometimes presents itself within some unfortunate individuals who have contracted the sickness. Though not all of them give into it. The weaker-willed become the serial killers that never wound up getting caught. Those of a stronger will can fight it off. Channel their aggression into something more productive. Quite a few of these people made it rather far in armies all over Eos, especially in the Niflheim army. Well, because I had my hand in those cases in particular.”

Ardyn leaned forwards a little. His hair was falling into his face but it did not hide the almost murderous smile on his face, it did not make his eyes glint any less in the dark. He couldn’t see from down there but Ignis was fairly certain that he had dropped his human face and returned to looking like something stuck between a human and a horrifying monster.

“Those who can control it are the strongest. A Deathclaw is nothing but a person who could control it. That is why they are so high-strung whenever actual people walk by. Part of them remembers that they did not want to kill. Part of them remembers that they were once able to control themselves and fight back the urges. The slightest movement and all their willpower comes undone. It is a different case from those who can speak, mind. And it is not limited to humans either! Behemoths that managed to fight back going on a rampage in the ecosystem they inhabit become the ice-controlling monsters you see now, for example!”

Ardyn stood back up straight. Whether he had dropped the human face or not was now no longer visible. All he saw was the same face Ardyn had always had, since the day he lost his humanity and mortality all those years ago. The same face that the Mystic had looked into as he read the sentence. The same face that Gilgamesh of Lix village had served. Finally a face for all the horrible things that had happened in the world, and here Ignis stood, listening to the man’s almost mad ramblings.

Except those weren’t ramblings. It was true that Ardyn lied a lot, but there were so many moments where he always told the truth.

This definitely was a truth. Something that he thought was interesting or hilarious enough to tell Ignis.

“Considering that that slab of meat they call Shield of the King these days walked away and met with his little insect companions, I dare say you are the latter case rather than a serial killer in the making.”

Ignis acted automatically. Like a clockwork machine. He drew the dagger Ardyn had given him so long ago and tossed it.

Ardyn staggered backwards, an amused look still on his face as he stared down at Ignis. The knife, Mori, was perfectly embedded in his forehead. Ignis had thrown with the intention to kill, and since Ardyn had not expected to be dodging anything he had not reacted.

“Goodness. I tell you all of this with no strings attached, and this is how you repay me?” He yanked the knife out of his head and tossed it back. “That’s… quite rude...”

The Accursed collapsed in front of the throne.

* * *

“Hey. I have one question.”

No answer, but while he had expected Ardyn to either talk or dance around the question, he had known right away that Lunafreya would never answer him unless she decided it was time to start talking back. He was sitting on top of a building, his eyes fixed on where the Glaives had spent the last week building a base. Then Aranea and Gladio had left the city together to return to Lestallum and tell them where their new headquarters in the city were, where the survivors of the fall and darkness had holed themselves up for all this time.

“Did you know about any of this? You’ve been privy to a lot more information than most other people on Eos, especially regarding the Scourge. Did Shiva ever talk to you about that? Your mother?”

“ _I had my suspicions. But I did not know. Some things in history make quite a lot more sense if you assume that either Ardyn had his hands in it directly or that it was a side product of a Scourge infection that ran rampant undetected. The sinking of the Temple of the Tidemother by a group of fanatics early during the first few years of the shared calendar, for example. True, it is easy to simply stamp them as fanatics, but rarely do these people ever get enough power to actually do these things. If you assume that they either had Ardyn’s support and therefore the Sage within their ranks, or they were Scourge-infected and therefore stronger than the average human… Then breaking the bonds that kept the temple afloat near the Altar makes a lot more sense. Just about twenty people cannot sink a temple built during the days of Solheim. Twenty people and the Accursed or twenty people on the verge of turning into Daemons however...”_

“So not even the Oracle was told that this was something the Scourge was capable of making people do?”

Lunafreya remained silent for a long while. Somewhere down in the streets he heard the screeching of a bunch of goblins trying to take on a single oversized Ahriman. The awful crunching noise told him that the Ahriman was winning.

“ _Again, we had our suspicions. The only ones who could confirm these suspicions were...”_

“The gods, who never truly answered you – or the Accursed, whose identity you did not know but who hated your bloodline just about as much as they hated the gods.”

“ _Shiva would have answered me had I asked the right questions.”_

“Did you ever ask the right questions, Lunafreya Nox Fleuret?”

“… _No. No, I did not.”_

“I see.”

Somehow that sounded a lot like the way he and Ardyn spoke. If Ignis asked the right questions, he got the answers that he wanted. Lunafreya did not ask, and therefore did not receive answers, and instead the gods remained silent.

The difference between Ignis’ case and hers was that sometimes Ardyn spoke without being prompted.

“ _It is rather suspicious. He has no reason to talk to you about things way in the past. He has lived that long without ever sharing it. So why share it now?”_

That was a question he had no answer for, and Lunafreya offered nothing else before falling silent again.

Something was definitely happening, and Ignis was no longer certain if he could really judge this correctly. After all, he was doomed to a certain downfall. The same sickness that had taken so many before him, that had made people turn against the Sage of old.

He ran a hand through his hair.

People in Insomnia. Daemons in Insomnia. This was going to escalate sooner rather than later, and someone might find the Ring of the Lucii. And then it would have all been for naught.


	28. ANTIQUITY

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the gods were against me finishing this chapter, my laptop froze once and then the writing program froze/forced me to close it no less than TWO times today but FUCK YOU I FINISHED IT ANYWAY

He was sitting on the throne that should always have been his, barely more than a faint smile on his face. Ignis was unaware of what he was planning, Ignis was unaware of the fact that there were _people_ coming to Insomnia for the first time in years. With Ravus dead, suddenly Noctis had been spurred into action. Ardyn knew that the Chosen’s closest friends and allies had suggested they try retaking at least part of the Crown City before. They had not gotten far with it, with Noctis’ ever present anxiety to have people around him die like flies making the Chosen hesitant.

Niflheim had gone a little too far with the attempt on his life when he had been but a sullen child, and Ardyn would have flared up in anger as the voice in his head that sounded a suspicious lot like himself demanded. But instead he remained level-headed for once.

Somnus had noted that something about him had changed. Ardyn had only asked if it had been for the better, and then the little trinket in his hands had fallen silent.

Truth be told, Ardyn had noticed. He had noticed how his demeanour changed like an erratic tide; sometimes his anger and hatred was the waves furiously crashing against the shore, tearing into rock for centuries until the cliffs finally crumbled. But sometimes it was the meek and mellow sea, ebbed away and calm. It had been centuries, almost two millennia since Ardyn had not let anger and spite guide him.

Those moments of clarity were perhaps the worst thing. In those moments he felt _something._ It wasn’t quite guilt – he had not a shred of remorse in his body – but it wasn’t something akin to content either. Whatever it was, it made his tongue loose. Ignis, a purveyor of knowledge, was being told things that Ardyn had not mentioned to anyone. Not even the very few people who he did stop beside as they turned into Daemons, not a single soul in Niflheim once he finally managed to get the position he wanted there.

He had told Besithia many things about the Scourge, but he had left out a great many things too. Being unaware of the direct dangers associated with experimenting on Daemons made the researchers bold enough to have the audacity to create new breeds of Daemons for combat. It was _hilarious._

But the one thing that Besithia never succeeded at was making a Daemon retain its human form. Ardyn had kept the vital information that it was impossible for a Daemon to look more human than like a creature straight from horror stories. It were normal, very mortal people, who made that some sort of urban legend. Sure, some retained vaguely humanoid shapes, some spoke, but there were no human Daemons. A Necromancer was a Necromancer, not a person floating about.

But humans liked to believe in that urban legend. Besithia did, too.

Eventually he did create his vaguely human-shaped Daemons, even if they were more machine and mindless strength than Daemons that were driven by instinct and the desire to hurt the living.

Ardyn leaned backwards on the throne.

“Now, who should I send to welcome that group?”

He was speaking to no one in particular.

If Lunafreya or Somnus were around, they remained silent. Though in Somnus’ case, he knew that he was staying silent out of disgust. Lunafreya had not reappeared since that day.

“The Shield’s father would be amusing, to say the least. It would make him go from composed and calm to raging against a creature that doesn’t even exist. It would stir up his hatred, perhaps he might spur his beloved King to finally set foot in this accursed city!” He turned to look at the hole in the ceiling. “Or perhaps the beloved father. That would most certainly make the Chosen come running like a parched animal to an illusion in the desert.”

Again no answer, but he felt a slight tremble in the energies in the room. Whether it was Somnus or the first sign of life from Crepera or Tonitrus in ages he didn’t know, but it made him grin.

“The Oracle herself would be a viable choice. And though he turned into a lowly Foras, perhaps even the late Emperor Aldercapt would get a reaction from some of the people in the group – dearest Aranea, for example. … Oh, it truly is too bad that they burned Ravus’ corpse. It would have been rather fun to send him after his former allies.”

Alas, burned bodies meant that the illusion wouldn’t work as intended.

Ardyn stood up.

Burning bodies. Suddenly he had an idea, and once more whichever of the three former rulers of Lucis were reacting to what was going through his head quivered in what felt like disgust.

“Ah. Yes, that seems a suitable choice then, don’t you think? Your former little champion for a night as the welcoming committee for the Chosen’s brigands.”

* * *

He should have been furious. Should have stormed after Ignis, should have broken every damned bone in that little rat’s body, should have made him _beg_ for forgiveness as he tore his limbs off only to sew them back on, heal every scratch and nick and shattered piece of bone, only to break it all again.

Ardyn however simply sat up, wiped the blood off his face.

Something was roaring in rage, wanted to show his subordinate, his little plaything, where it belonged.

But right now he was the sea as the tide went back. Calm, collected. After the initial malicious glee as Ignis ran off once Ardyn dropped his cryptic message he’d calmed down. Truth be told, he wasn’t really sure what the hell was going on. He had been serious when he said that he could rip Ignis’ limbs off. But as soon as the advisor had let go of him the anger had immediately dissipated and left him in that strange floaty feeling of… whatever it was.

“ _I knew my brother was somewhere under all these layers.”_

“Be quiet, Somnus, will you? I’m trying to think here.”

“ _You of all people should know what’s going on. You are the Accursed, yes, but that does not mean you were chosen to be a herald of the dark. You’re just like the boy.”_

“He’s hardly a boy, idiot.”

“ _Stuck between being a person and a monster.”_

Ardyn nearly started to laugh right there as he picked the knife up and twirled it in his hands. That very same knife that the person who was now stuck in his head had once rammed into his back with no remorse because the gods told him to. Because the _Oracle_ told him to. As far as Ardyn knew, anyway. He wasn’t going to ask his brother why he had done it. It was easy enough to guess what was behind it anyway.

“Oh, please. I asked you to be quiet, and here you are. Waxing poetic as if you’re talking to a person, not a monster bursting at the seams. We both know what happens if I overdo it with the little magic tricks. Or when my emotions get the better of me. You’ve _seen_ it, after all. That was why you banished me.”

“ _It does not change the fact you are indeed… a human.”_

“Is that _regret_ I hear, Somnus? Colour me surprised.” He wasn’t surprised.

Once upon a time he would have been. Not long after he heard that his brother had passed Ardyn wondered when the farce would end. By the time the Conqueror was a teenager dreaming of daring conquests that outdid even those of his ancestors he had given up on the thought of ever returning and finding his distant relatives having a message for him from his father. Instead he focused his rage as he did after he was banished.

“Any other day and you’d be calling me an abomination in dire need of salvation! How come you changed your mind now?” Ardyn narrowed his eyes. “The fool on his way to hellfire, is it? That’s the reason you’re trying to remind me of my humanity. Now then, Somnus dearest, do I have to remind you that I had no hand in what he did in the end?”

The silence was stifling. Somewhere from outside he heard the sound of something large fighting people – likely the intruders alongside the people who stayed against a bunch of Nagas from the sound of it. He knew that his brother was giving him the silent treatment to think of a reply; Somnus had always been like this. Though he had allegedly shed that habit as soon as he was crowned king of the small country Lucis on the continent of the same name. His descendants had extended the kingdom’s reach to the borders of the continent after his death.

“I gave him the order to bring me proof that he _defeated_ Gilgamesh. I never told him to dump him in the canyon, even if that might have finally broken the hold that the Crystal and the Hexatheon had on him – his duty was done, after all. The final Shield defeated him. All Ignis did was end his centuries-long suffering earlier. But as things stand, I never ordered this. True, I did order him to kill Marshal Cor Leonis and did the deed myself when he didn’t. That I cannot deny. I did however leave him full freedom of what to do with the Niffs he hunted down. Quite a few of them died, not through my hand. Not through his hand, either. Directly at least. Daemons or not; it were his orders. Thus he indirectly killed a bunch of Niffs. Same with the group up near the Vesperpool.”

Ardyn finally stood up. He turned to walk towards the hole in the wall that gave way to the silent and dark city below him. Insomnia was vast, like the sea that had allegedly swallowed up the Ring of the Lucii. Not that he had seen much of it during its prime; even back when he had been here as the esteemed Chancellor Izunia alongside Emperor Aldercapt to sign a peace treaty he had not gotten to see much of it. Now all he had were the ruins of the city that his family had built, and it filled him with glee to be the one to ruin it further and further.

“Needless to say, he’s going down a familiar path, isn’t he? And it’s all thanks to you and the Hexatheon once more. Less secrecy would have likely not driven him away. No matter how much Lunafreya showed him; he still bent his head to me in the end. Ulterior motives or not, this is where we stand.”

He had to admit something about indirectly calling Somnus and the gods the villains in this story was… elating. He’d waited for so long and now that the endless night was finally here, he had the upper hand. Without the Chosen they could all do nothing but wait and watch as the world they were trying to protect started falling apart slowly but steadily.

“Again. Give him the ring and we can end this _farce._ Otherwise, be quiet and enjoy the show.”

Somnus didn’t say anything else.

Fine as far as Ardyn was concerned.

* * *

Perhaps dragging Ignis out into the countryside when there were now people in Insomnia was not wise, but Ardyn said he had a plan regarding that. Several huge Daemons when the people in Insomnia were only a handful fools and none of them as strong as the king and his men were a good enough deterrent. Ignis himself didn’t look too happy about it – he likely feared another encounter with the Infernian.

Considering that Ignis was sharp when he needed to be, it wouldn’t have surprised Ardyn that he had figured out that the symptoms had started worsening since the day Ardyn dragged him up to meet the Infernian. He couldn’t even be mad about the apprehension when it came to the mad god – Ardyn was admittedly not much of a fan either. But Ifrit had corrupted himself and then demanded that Ardyn make it worse once Bahamut and his ilk had made their prophecy and tossed Ardyn aside. Their alliance was one of necessity rather than anything else, and Ardyn sincerely detested all deities of Eos. That included Ifrit.

He understood, of course. Being betrayed by those one had taught everything and given their all for hurt; but somehow unleashing a sickness that would wipe out everyone or doom the next generations to be at the behest of the gods for all eternity until a Chosen came along seemed a tad extreme. Even to someone who welcomed the eternal night like an old friend.

Ignis visibly relaxed when Ardyn took a different turn.

Seeing in the dark made it rather easy to drive a car without lights, and for once Ignis seemed to actively watch what was going on as the countryside passed. Ardyn himself held his tongue; there was no point in commenting on how useful night vision was in a world where the sun was blocked out until someone purified the air with their almost senseless sacrifice.

Ardyn stopped the car when they reached the Vesperpool. Drove it off the road and made certain it was not easy to see, and then signalled Ignis to follow him. Somewhere near the shore, where the dead and stale water reflected the light the hunters nearby carried around, they stopped. They were rather far away still far enough from these people so they wouldn’t hear them, but light sure reflected far in the dark. Somewhere across the lake another pair of lights shone, which meant that there were people looking for something here. The entry to the old Sol ruins nearby also glowed in the perpetual darkness – they were open now. Whatever was contained within had come out, but at least Noctis and his entourage had taken care of what the coward king of old sealed within after the Oracle died her gruesome death.

Ignis seemed to be thinking about something similar, considering the deep frown he wore as he watched the hunters leave in the distance. When they met with their companions halfway, the advisor finally turned around to look at the Accursed.

His voice did not shake the slightest, and even his expression was perfectly neutral as he spoke. “I assumed you would gut me like an animal and leave me for these men and women to find as revenge for what I… did the other day. Yet I live. Why, Your Majesty?”

Ardyn rolled his eyes. “First off, have you ever gutted a human? Nasty business. Also entirely too much work. Sure, it is _fantastic_ for the shock value, but that is sincerely more effort than it is worth it. If I wanted to kill you in return for your insubordination, I would make certain your former friends are nearby and watch me choke the life out of you. Break your neck and toss your corpse at them. But that is not why we are here.”

He walked away, and Ignis stood still for a few confused heartbeats. He threw another glance across the water, across the myriad of dead fish that floated on the surface. The smell was abhorrent, and Ardyn imagined that he crinkled his nose a little before turning away from the distant lights of the hunters to follow Ardyn into the bushes and back onto the barely trodden path. He almost casually made his way through dead undergrowth and brushed aside bushes that once would have been annoying to get through. But now they were only brittle, nearly broke in half as he pushed past.

There were plenty of plants that were still alive. It wouldn’t turn into a complete wasteland unless the darkness lasted for more than two decade; those plants were strong and could easily survive until the Chosen managed to bring back the light. Not that Ardyn would live to see that. Neither would Noctis.

Somehow he also doubted that Ignis would.

Not that he cared.

They continued their trek in silence until the living plants outnumbered the dead ones.

“Fascinating, is it not? Nature has a way of surviving this. There are waters that are still alive, there are plants that can live for the longest time without light and rain.”

Ignis merely hummed in agreement, clearly still distracted by the fact the lights at the shore did not move. Perhaps they had spotted them, he thought. Ardyn decided not to mention that normal humans would have never seen them across the water, and if they had caught their glowing eyes they would have definitely assumed they were Daemons. Once more they continued in silence until Ardyn stopped at where the maps usually indicated the Myrlwood region began.

Ignis also stopped, a frown on his face. He was clearly thinking of something, especially when he moved his hand to his face to adjust his non-present glasses. He froze for a second when he realised he wasn’t wearing glasses, then held back a sigh of some sort.

“Alas, there are some species that would have easily survived the dark that barely made it to this point in time. There are man breeds of Chocobos, but barely any can adjust to the environment as well as the Black Chocobo. Unfortunately that does not protect them against predators and humans hunting them to near extinction.”

Ignis crossed his arms, an uncomfortable expression on his face. “There was a flock of them in here. Keyword, was. I know not what became of them, but we did… find a lone egg and no mother.”

Ardyn had watched that story unfold and nodded. Then they continued their march, though it was much less silent now. For some reason he thought he could hear the advisor’s heartbeat, faster than normal as they made their way through what was once a region closed off to civilians because of the dangerous flora and fauna that resided within. Somewhere in the distance he caught the gleam of white stone against the darkened skies, but Ardyn did not lead them down that pathway. Ignis certainly seemed relieved when Ardyn led them to the haven.

Not that either of them stepped on it. Ardyn watched as Ignis at least attempted it, but flinched backwards after he got as close as possible. He was unable to set a foot on the rock with the runes emblazoned on it, and the confusion the advisor displayed vanished into disgust within a split second.

“The Founder King and the first Oracle made a point in travelling across the country to set up these blessed resting spaces. The Oracle continued this on the other continents, until the day she died and her daughter took up the trident she left behind. Granted, the power since corroded across the bloodline – Lunafreya definitely was adept at healing, but she would have likely not been able to purify the land all by herself to set up a haven.”

Ignis threw a look over his shoulder into Ardyn’s general direction, and the Accursed nearly started laughing.

The water here was not still. It still moved, slower than it had before but it had not grown into the sludge that nearly all bodies of water that were not the wide, open sea had become. He caught the shimmer of scales in the depth of the pool, silver and very tempting.

“Whether there was any system to what places they chose or not remains a mystery, but there is a definite reason why there are several in the dungeons deep underneath Lucis. After all, kings and Oracles have ever walked hand in hand, and when they attempted to banish these creatures together, not knowing of their eventual failure… they needed safe spaces to rest. Even an Oracle in training could purify the wretched earth to ensure a calm, undisturbed sleep upon these holy sites.” He shrugged. “Alas, for the first hundred or so years of these havens existed, people used them to check if their loved ones were infected. After all, as you saw, we cannot walk onto them. Those who couldn’t were executed. Witch hunts, they called it, because it usually were women who were dragged to test their purity. Quite the abhorrent practice, and one of the few that were forbidden by law. Not that these laws exist any longer now that people have stopped this nonsense, but you get my point.”

“… Why are you telling me all this?”

Something splashed in the water as Ardyn stared up at the sky. The advisor was clearly keeping his distance, still not entirely certain that he would walk away from this conversation alive after what had happened not too long ago.

“That is an excellent question.”

“...”

“I suppose I simply like hearing myself talk.”

Ignis left it at that, and Ardyn was rather surprised that the young man did not press the issue.

Truth be told, Ardyn didn’t know entirely himself. Something about these moments of shocking clarity made him want to talk about what he had learned. Made him want someone to _understand_ what the gods and what he had done wrong. It wasn’t an attempt to beg for forgiveness as Somnus had suggested the other day – it was something else, something that he couldn’t quite name.

Ardyn kept his eyes on the cloud above that blocked the sun. The skies would one day lose this strange violet tint and give way to naught but darkness. The miasma was increasing steadily even without his input as Accursed. One day the last reminders of the sun would vanish entirely.

They stood there for a while in complete silence before Ardyn caught a movement in the distance and said that perhaps it would be wiser if they left. Ignis voiced no complaint and followed silently.

Once they were back at the Vesperpool proper, Ardyn stopped once again. There was that other haven, and Steyliff Grove was not too far away either.

“Barely anything of it remains, but close to the Grove the ancient village of Lix stood once. Not that there are any survivors of it nowadays, but this is where some of the strongest warriors of Lucis came from.”

Ignis narrowed his eyes and stared into the direction of the ancient Sol ruins.

“Descendants of those who created the place we all call Steyliff. Warriors, but once they were also mages. … Not that they had any chance to withstand the full might of someone with the Crystal and the Oracle by their side.”

The advisor turned his head back to the Accursed. “The… Your brother led the charge against a village together with the Oracle?”

“And nothing less was necessary. Not even Gilgamesh could defeat the leader of the village. That is why he set out, that is why we met. A quest for strength… one that ended with him where he was and all the people who did nothing but support him in his decision to travel to become stronger dead before he ever saw them again. Granted, it was a necessity. Better to kill these people now before the Scourge made them into hideous creatures stronger than the average human. Or so the Oracle claimed, saying that she foresaw nothing but trouble for them. And considering that years later one of her descendants was killed by a creature from this region it was a good call. Daemons and creatures from the Vesperpool are stronger than you would believe.”

Ignis shuddered. “So they eradicated the village of Lix in an attempt to...”

“Prematurely cull any terrifying Daemons that its inhabitants would become. And it was a good call. Not too long after the Scourge ran rampant around these parts. Hundreds of animals turned into abominations that needed to be put down. If there had been actual people living here…”

“Couldn’t they just have told the people to relocate?”

Ardyn laughed. Laughed almost too loud in the silence of the dark.

“And give them enough ground to question where one of theirs had gone? Sure, they were mercenaries that could be bought with money, but if they as much as caught a whisper of what allegedly happened to a son of their village… they would have marched on the budding capital city. Burnt the castle down to demand answers. Their leader quite cared about his people, and he was already growing suspicious of Gilgamesh’s long absence. History would have been quite different if Somnus had let the people of Lix live.”

That, and the gods had told Somnus to. The Lucis Caelum bloodline bent to the Draconian like a bunch of servants grovelling in the dirt, after all.

Ardyn left that part out, because he was fairly certain that Ignis already was not the biggest fan of the Hexatheon.

* * *

“If you excuse the nagging curiosity, Your Majesty, but there is something I’ve been wondering about for a while.”

Somewhere on another bunch of streets, Glaives and hunters were trying to reclaim a resting place in the underground network. Ignis and Ardyn were far away from that commotion, but something about the air in Insomnia was strange that day. It wasn’t as stale as it usually was in the dark. Something was moving, and not something that Ardyn was enjoying. He knew that tension, but he couldn’t for the un-life of his remember what it was. Somehow all his mind conjured up was the image of Verstael Besithia, but he had made certain that no Diamond Weapons remained. These things were too dangerous to be allowed to exist, just as Besithia could not be suffered to live if his goal was to destroy the rest of humanity and then the gods and rule over a devastatingly dead planet.

“And whatever could that be?”

Ignis wiped the sweat off his face. He looked less than in a good condition, his green eyes glazed over and his voice shaking.

Stasis.

“If you… overdid it like I just did in this… ah, let’s call it training session. Would you suffer some side-effects as well?”

“Every mage does, you foolish creature,” Ardyn deadpanned and crossed his arm.

This cross-section of Insomnia was wide. There were no craters and even the overall destruction around this museum was not as bad as it were in other sections near the Citadel. Just an empty husk of a drop-ship, but otherwise there was surprisingly little rubble in the way of things. It was perfect for teaching how to use plain magic on the go while dodging things.

Ignis nodded, his entire body shaking as if he were cold. “I… guess. But you’re not like the Glaives. Definitely not like me.”

“Are you testing how much I’ll tell you?”

Ignis cracked a tired smile as he leaned against the Trident of the Oracle. “No. I’m telling the truth here.”

Ardyn watched him for a few more minutes. Scourge-fuelled stasis was not something that people enjoyed. Indeed, Ignis froze completely for a moment before shooting Ardyn a pained expression, followed by the advisor hunching over and trying not to throw up. It was as if the magic user went into stasis for the first time, awful and fever-inducing, this time with the added side-effect of them hearing voices. Ardyn had never investigated this one further because he already heard the voices without the stasis part, but for humans it usually led to… exactly the reaction Ignis was having. Nausea. Feeling cold after their body had long since grown used to the higher temperature.

“Stasis is something I tend to avoid, my dear Ignis.” He’d not fallen into the trap of overusing his magic for over three hundred years. “But considering I am what they call the source of the Scourge these days… Have you ever heard of blood moon events?”

“… Yes.”

“Well, that is precisely what happens.”

Those nights when the moon shone blood red were something that people feared all over Eos. It was an urban legend nowadays even though several records of it existed. After all the moon had not risen red in so many years that people assumed it was an elaborate hoax or something that had been wiped off the earth nowadays.

Those nights made the Daemons that were already unpleasant company even worse. They all turned frantic. People caught on their own were usually torn apart, and it was what likely led to hunters going out in at least pairs of two when they hunted at night. Just in case the countryside was caught in the strange gleam of a moon not quite right, just in case the Daemons were frantic and bloodthirsty and hideously twisted and gurgling.

Ardyn himself usually lost his human face during that time. He was hunched over, unable to speak for the most part. That was the picture that the stories told by the Oracles told; a creature that was completely incapable of human thought as it tore living creatures apart for fun. The very thing that Lunafreya had expected until she realised what exactly the Accursed was – or rather who it was. It had been too late for her, even her promise of him knowing peace meant nothing as he drove the knife that had once stuck out between his shoulders into her stomach. Bleeding to death like that was perhaps the worst death he could have given her. The most inhumane.

It certainly made him seem like the monster that those stories painted him as.

The monster he was without a shred of remorse.

Ignis crumpled back to his knees, the Trident of the Oracle in his hands as he sat on the street completely out of it. His entire body was shaking, all colour had drained from his face.

“All things considered, your limits are impressive. Not relying on those flasks the Crownsguard use normally makes the natural stamina run out much faster. Yet you lasted longer than a king with the Crystal at his back, lasted longer than even the more powerful Glaive mages. To think that no one ever considered training you in the art of the Kingsglaive properly… what a damn waste.”

Ignis shook his head slowly. “Ah?”

But all Ardyn did was turn around. “Your accuracy could use some work, but the fact that you managed to turn your projectiles into _magic boomerangs_ is quite impressive. You learned how to control that better and quell the immense energy loss when you made a spell return. Perhaps you should consider using smaller fireballs – it would give you the ability to send several out and make them return. While not the best for overall accuracy it might increase your chance of hitting someone trying to dodge you, and the energy output would remain approximately the same.”

Not to mention that the Daemon that Ignis would turn into one day would be rather terrifying overall if he learned that. There were a few mage-types that were able to do that, but someone with Ignis’ sheer _potential_ Ardyn had never seen.

The advisor nodded slowly. Ardyn nearly snorted.

“Now that I know your limits it will be easier to train you in the finer arts of perfecting magic without close combat. Yes, your spellblades are still very impressive and your strongest point, but if you were to fight someone who overpowers you in brute combat like Gladiolus Amicitia… something like that would be a trump card you could easily play to turn the tide against him.”

Ignis did not react.

The tension in the air was still high. It almost felt… electric. But it was not the Fulgurian approaching them; the god of thunder always felt different. In fact the tension that seemed to ripple through Insomnia was not related to the Hexatheon at all – after all, now he felt the familiar surge that foretold the arrival of a very special friend of his.

Even Ignis cringed when he heard the clear crack of ice as Shiva appeared.

Her face as Gentiana was as serene as ever, but Ardyn was more than annoyed now.

“Good grief. Don’t you have better things to do, now that the infernal – ha – covenant has been forged between you and the Chosen?”

The tension was thick enough that he could have touched it.

Again all it reminded him of was the Diamond Weapons that Besithia had created, and Ardyn felt like he was missing a very important and very obvious detail here as the goddess of ice stood beside him. Ignis slowly dragged himself back to his feet even if he looked like he was on the verge of passing out altogether, his green eyes narrowed but still fixed on Shiva.

This must have been his first time seeing the Messenger Gentiana. After all, normal mortals rarely saw the Messengers; the dogs that people called Umbra and Pryna being an obvious exception to the rule. But Shiva stood there in the form of her favourite Messenger’s body, her eyes closed and her posture as serene as ever.

She also completely ignored the Accursed, seeing as she stepped forwards to close the distance between herself and Ignis.

She bent down when she stood in front of him and put a hand on his cheek. Ardyn saw how the advisor cringed; her hand was likely as cold as the ice she commanded.

“Perhaps it is about time we interfere in this story.” Her voice was soft, almost gentle, but that was what alerted Ardyn.

The electric tension… the fact it all brought up Besithia’s face in his mind… They couldn’t have activated Immortalis. That was absolutely impossible; they had no soul to infuse the machine with and they were hardly going to shove Lunafreya into that abomination. Besides, Ardyn was fairly certain that everything about Immortalis was hard-coded to Besithia’s _exact_ genetic sequence, and last time he checked that little blonde sharpshooter was prancing about in the wilderness together with that insufferable Niff brat and the Leiden mechanic. And ‘last time’ in this case meant yesterday.

No, it couldn’t be Immortalis. There were few other things that Ardyn could think of could cause this kind of tension, but… something… something was stirring here.

Ignis was staring up into Gentiana’s face, and all Ardyn saw was how the advisor’s eyes widened a little.

“The Sage we can suffer. The Accursed we can let roam. But giving the Accursed Sage an apprentice we cannot.” She let go of Ignis’ face. “You can yet turn the tide. Do as you were told to.”

Ignis only mouthed ‘return home’, the words that quite a few people seemed to have told him over the last four or so years. Ardyn shook off his confusion about what was going on.

“I don’t quite think that is your call to make, Shiva!”

Whatever spell she had on him broke when he called her by her name. Ignis’ eyes went wide again as he tore his look from Gentiana’s face and turned to look at Ardyn.

“He betrayed your side, betrayed his _lover._ By all means, traitors like that are my _property_ , whether you call them my _apprentice_ or not – so get your hands off him and leave _my city!”_

She paused as Ignis backed away slightly, used the Trident of the Oracle to haul himself back to his feet again.

“Is this your answer, then? Your final answer?”

He was still in a stasis-fuelled haze. Ardyn walked up behind her, but she did not turn around to face him. Exactly that kind of behaviour had made her fall when Niflheim had led the charge against the raging goddess following the death of Oracle Sylva and the fact that the country Niflheim now ruled over the entirety of the continent. He reached for her but all he felt was coldness. Were he to touch her now he would turn into an ice statue once more, and her focus was still fixed on Ignis.

“… That is my final answer.”

Despite being cornered by a goddess clearly not here for civil discussion, Ignis held his ground, no matter how exhausted he was. In fact the icy glare he shot Shiva seemed to match her very element to the core; cold enough to snap a living being’s heart in two. But there were no living beings here. Just the Accursed, the Goddess of Ice and Sorrow, and the mortal anyone else would think they were fighting over if they came across this scene now.

“So be it.”

The tension crackled. Something rolled through the air, crackled hideously as something twisted. Ignis staggered and even Ardyn had to raise his hands to keep his eyes from burning. Shiva had stepped away from the two of them as Ignis stood there heavily holding onto the trident seeing as it was the only thing keeping him on his feet, and Ardyn was staring at her through narrowed eyes.

Now he realised what this was reminding him of. The exact one time that Niflheim had managed to activate this thing that Solheim had created… or had not created. No one was certain where it had come from.

“So you are using something that can easily destroy you on us? Even though you do not control it?”

Gentiana’s form melted. Shiva appeared, pristinely beautiful as she was the day Ardyn had first seen the goddess all those years ago. Ignis meanwhile wheezed in surprise, but Ardyn tried to ignore him.

“It merely followed me here, followed its programming. But as I said earlier, Accursed, Apprentice… perhaps the time to idly sit by and let this happen is over.”

She raised her hand.

Ardyn whirled around as she shot a single bolt of ice. Watched as it connected with solid steel.

Heard a familiar beep from the machine; and behind his back he heard the also familiar sound of the Glacian leaving without a trace of her remaining.

“… Good grief.”

“Your… Ma… Ardyn! What on _earth_ is that!?”

He inhaled slowly. Sighed deeply as he reached into the air to materialise his scythe.

“Omega. And Shiva did us the honour of switching on its defence program.”


	29. STASIS

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (whispers "we have a final chapter count and i had an episode over that for like 20 minutes on twitter, thanks for your attention" and vanishes into sand)
> 
> there's mentions of uh. implied cannibalism in the last paragraph, if that ain't your cup of tea skip to the last line of the chapter.
> 
> EDIT an unimportant addendum, but i updated this fic, queued up for the vault in ff14, and wound up with ignis scientias from the server shiva and i swear to god some kind of otherworldly deity is trying to punish me for my hubris

There was only so much one could learn before lesser memories started to get replaced. Ardyn made a point in clinging to those memories related to the ones who irrevocably screwed his life over – his brother, the Oracle, the gods – but much of everything else had been discarded for knowledge. Knowledge he used in his own favour. After all, knowing how to build airships was more important than remembering the faces and names of his parents, his childhood friends and closest servants. Knowing how to deliberately and delicately manipulate people without them catching on was more important than recalling half the things his teacher taught him regarding limits on magic. Those were all internal, anyway. His body knew the limits, Scourge or not, so why did his head have to know?

If someone asked Ardyn whether he travelled alone or not he would have paused and said that he at least remembered a mercenary. If there were any other people, he certainly did not remember. Sometimes there was a flash, a vague memory that tried to worm its way out of the depths of his heart and back into his head, but it failed to push its way past the knowledge he had amassed. Sol technology and defence mechanisms, how to warp reality with just a little more power output than usual thanks to his certainly unusual magic, the delicate and proper procedures to keep a district on the verge of rebellion under control for the crown. All those things definitely outweighed simple emotional attachments, names, songs of a bygone era.

Somehow that always worked in his favour. He had no attachments – the Chancellor of Niflheim was seen as friendly, very touchy-feely but also very distant when it came down to it. The military department didn’t know that as well as the politics department, of course; some of the military would attempt to get on his good side, and the ministers and servants of the country would only roll their eyes because they knew the chancellor had no good side. It was a miracle if he even remembered a name.

But they all knew that Emperor Aldercapt had not allowed him in the capital because of his undeniable skill at human interaction. The people had not elected him chancellor because they wanted someone to properly listen to their everyday woes. No, Ardyn had been there for his knowledge and his ability to keep the masses appeased while the war drained the country. Eventually they would rule the world, Emperor Aldercapt would say, and Ardyn was left to forward things to the people. People who had always been part of Niflheim, people whose country had been absorbed by the military might without a proper fight, countries that had been violently taken over.

Machinery was something that Ardyn had learned quite a lot about. Sol machinery on the other hand was something he had decidedly voiced his concerns against. Those creations were hard to activate and even harder to control, and it was as if Niflheim had forgotten that Solheim had fallen after using machinery against gods.

He’d eyed Omega critically back in the capital. He’d been almost relieved when the project had been discarded after too many a casualty. Something about this thing was unsettling, but he had long since forgotten why he felt that way.

Ignis had certainly been knocked out of his dizziness by the sheer shock of being faced with this thing. Unfortunately, Ardyn could feel that the energy around him was still disturbed. Stasis, in the worst possible moment.

Or rather, the perfect moment. That was why Shiva had waited before approaching them.

“Am I supposed to know what an Omega is?”

At least Ignis was clever enough to not raise his voice any more. The machine had a mind of its own and it was definitely sizing up the situation. If it could laugh, it probably would. A mortal and an immortal.

Though perhaps he would less immortal than previously assumed against this thing. It could kill gods if the reports were to be believed. And what was Ardyn Izunia, if not a demigod of darkness, sent to rend apart the light that the actual gods had fought so hard to nourish?

Ignis on the other hand would be a pushover for this husk of steel and metal and electricity.

“A weapon of Solheim, allegedly. Created to do no less than destroy divinity, as far as research conducted in Niflheim concluded before the project was abandoned.”

If people asked him if he remembered ever travelling with people, he wouldn’t remember that once someone also frowned a similar frown as they seized up the situation. Ardyn didn’t remember that person, did not remember how long he travelled with them, what fate befell them. But he understood that look on Ignis’ face as he stared at the machine – and the machine seemingly stared back. That was perhaps the more startling fact about this.

Then again, Shiva was not likely to do things without thinking them through. That was her biggest weakness, her greatest asset. She loved humans once upon a time, had loved the little Oracle. This was her way of dealing with the _monster_ who had killed her and the fool who thought it was wise to rage against the heavens as Solheim did once upon a time. The machine in front of them had become active when Noctis had been born, perhaps sensing that something was afoot in the power levels. After all, Ifrit and Bahamut were dead and recovering their bodies. Shiva had fallen, too. Leviathan slumbered and would continue doing so until someone woke her, Titan and Ramuh likewise were fast asleep and biding their time. The Chosen’s birth and eventual selection had thrown the balance quite into disarray. Theoretically Noctis should be gathering his power now for their eventual confrontation at the height of his power.

Nothing of the sort was happening. And if Shiva’s words and actions so far were to be believed, it was all thanks to this simple almost puny mortal who was currently staring a walking death machine that was still seizing them up.

For a split moment, stillness.

Then all hell broke loose – or something of a sort. Ardyn had definitely seen hell itself rise to the surface, stared the god of fire and life in the face as they forced a pact of some sort. This was comparatively tame, but he knew that the ancient Sol architects, or whoever had created this monstrosity, were fully aware of what they needed to do.

A single stomp that nearly shattered the asphalt. Ignis made a mad dash for someone who had been barely able to stand mere moments before, just barely out of the way as the giant machine moved faster than it should have considering its sheer size and build. Then again this was not Niflheim machinery. This was not an engine built in Gralea, not something controlled by another human being.

Another earth-shattering stomp. The thing was definitely following Ignis. The advisor came to a half behind Ardyn, and once more the metal hunk stood still. Again likely computing the danger levels the newcomer displayed.

Ignis was _nervous._ Not scared, but nervous. Likely very aware of the fact that he was very much mortal while Ardyn simply was not.

“I know it may seem impudent of me to ask--”

“Why are you asking then, dearest Ignis?”

“Is there a chance you could… lend me a hand here?”

Ardyn could have just _left._ He hadn’t even thought about that. He was effectively immortal, no matter how many times this machine ground his body into fine dust. He would just be back a few hours later, reformed in the way he normally looked when he was not keeping his human appearance together. His very existence was tied together with the Scourge; as long as the sickness existed so did he. In return, as long as he lived there would be no salvation from what had effectively put a countdown on Ignis Scientia’s life.

“Perhaps I could.” He decided to mess with the advisor a little, and that cringe alone was worth it. “But I could also simply walk away and let this thing tear you apart.”

Ignis was silent for a moment. “You would let the gods destroy your… property?”

“Alas, you do have a point.”

He would have been lying if the thought of fighting something that not even the gods could defeat didn’t somehow excite him. Ardyn was under no delusions of defeating this thing completely; as far as research had concluded it was impossible to. This machine managed to bend time and space to its will if it wanted to escape a situation, which is why quite a few people assumed that not even Solheim had created this. An alien creation that was capable of rending divinity asunder; something that did not belong to Eos at large.

Perhaps it could end the Scourge.

Which made him wonder why the Six had waited for so long to get Ardyn accidentally involved with this thing.

“Try not to die then, Ignis.”

“As you command, Your Majesty.”

* * *

The base code for most of the Magitek machinery was the same. A MT at its base was similar to an engine, an airship not all that different from enhanced weaponry like Aranea Highwind used. Ardyn had spent a fair amount of time in his life messing with machinery, and therefore had a more than solid grasp on how to dismantle nearly the entire Niflheim army without even breaking a sweat unless the pilot he was fighting against was talented. Loqi Tummelt was considered a talented pilot, Aranea Highwind could have easily become High Commander had she not insisted on continuing being a mercenary above all else and therefore forever being nothing but a Commodore.

This thing was nothing like Niff machinery. While Niflheim claimed that most of their machinery was based on Solheim’s ancient unearthed creations, Omega was a step above most other things.

Its only glaring fault was that it did not have that many differing patterns. It was rather clear that normally it overwhelmed its opponents pretty fast. Those fast beams and heavy stomps that shook the earth around it made it rather clear that Omega was created for maximum output against strong opponents. A quite literal blazing victory in a short amount of time.

Created for something bigger than a mortal and the Accursed.

Ignis had taken several heavy blows as his body recovered from stasis, but once the feverish look had left his eyes he started dodging with the same deadly precision he had displayed in Altissia. Ardyn had tried his best to get some of the unnecessary flashiness out of his fighting style with the training regimen; backflips were unnecessary and definitely a weak point unless one was fighting a slow enemy – or not fighting on their own. Though Ignis still knew how it was like to fight with people he had finally become efficient at fighting on his own. It didn’t matter that he had barely managed to block a blow while still in stasis and now there was a new cut on his face that would leave a scar.

Ardyn watched another salve go off. The machine was pointedly _ignoring him._ All its attacks were directed at Ignis, and as long as Ardyn himself was not in the way the homing beams completely ignored him. Even the stomps were never into his direction.

Which meant he had a good chance to observe the battlefield, the combatants. He did move in whenever it looked like Ignis was going to take a heavy blow that would lead to his death down the line, but for the time being he simply watched. He noted the cracks on the building behind him. Noticed how Ignis’ movements were so much more precise than they had been when he had fought Ravus back at the Altar of the Tidemother. Noticed how seemingly no blow ever seemed to stick against this machine.

He’d tossed Ignis the dagger again earlier. This ancient weapon did not even leave the faintest scratch on Omega’s outer shell. The only weapons that drew sparks were the Trident of the Oracle and Ardyn’s scythe whenever he moved in to block a stomp to give Ignis time to get back on his feet properly.

This weapon was capable of destroying gods, after all. It made sense that only weapons with the faintest history relating to the Crystal could scratch the metal plating. Ifrit’s fires would not melt Omega; Shiva’s ice would not stop it in it tracks; no rolling thunder or earth torn asunder by Ramuh or Titan would remotely hinder it; not even the Feasting that Leviathan threatened mortals with would somehow make Omega retreat. Likely not even Bahamut and his infernal crystal blades would put a dent in this machine. Where humans and those stronger than humans had to bow their head and admit defeat, Omega would walk on and on; a machine made for a war. Which war it was, Ardyn had no idea, but the fact that it ever walked on remained.

Ignis rolled to the side.

A leg came crashing down on the asphalt. The crack in the building behind him grew a little. The earth shook, and Ignis staggered as he got back up on his feet.

Perhaps he had companions he no longer remembered once. People who came up with tactics on the go, like Ignis did back when he travelled with Noctis’ little group. Perhaps someone would have figured this out faster, would have prevented grievous injuries.

Hells, Ardyn didn’t remember. Didn’t want to remember.

But what he saw right now was a rather obvious flaw in Shiva’s logic. A flaw in the machine’s coding. Whether it was from Eos or not mattered little – the fact that Crystal-related weapons could harm it remained. It stood out like a sore thumb.

It had been in the back of his mind for a while. The blessings of the Kings of Yore had given him the ability to manipulate their counterparts in the Old Wall. The Old Wall; the one measure of defence that Insomnia had and that was always harder to control than anything else. Just a small wrong command and everything in the city could come crashing down. The destruction left by those statues that Nyx Ulric had brought back to life was almost worse than what Besithia’s prized Diamond Weapons had done.

If Ardyn was capable of controlling these statues, even with the spirits belonging to them rebelling against him…

The machine jumped. Ignis would not have the time to roll out of the way, seeing as he was still having trouble with his balance after that latest dodge.

Ardyn raised a hand.

Truth be told, he was expecting nothing. He half wanted Shiva to jump out and call this match off, wanted it to end with Ignis dead and the Ring of the Lucii _finally_ in Noctis’ hands.

The shrill sound of glass shattering broke the spell that this split moment had over him. Omega came crashing down, the joints on its leg creaking under the sudden weight as it was pushed backwards. Ignis’ eyes were wide as he looked up at the thin, sparkling shield that had deflected the blow meant to kill him.

It wasn’t the Wall. The Wall had been enhanced with machinery and two thousand years of knowledge regarding this kind of magic. Every spellcaster had their limits, and no matter how connected they were to the Crystal, a magical shield was a horror to uphold continuously. It sapped their strength to the point their lifespan decreased; sapped them to the point that King Regis looked like an old and broken man, was by any means an old and broken man, when he was barely advanced enough in years to even remotely be called _old._ Smaller shields and walls did barely drain its caster, though it did prevent them from moving altogether.

For a split moment the world seemed to stop. Somnus, Crepera and Tonitrus would have all shut up this moment if they had watched this unfold. Ardyn himself was staring at the shimmering red wall between Ignis and the giant machine kind of dumbfounded. Ignis looked like he had fallen from the skies and into this situation just now.

And then the machine let out a shrill beep. One that Ardyn recognised as it choosing a new target.

The Wave Cannon blasts shattered against the crystalline wall he erected in the last possible moment. Ignis desperately got as far away from the battlefield as possible without leaving entirely; just enough to see what the hell was going on. It seemed he didn’t quite understand what was happening.

Ardyn himself wasn’t entirely certain.

Blessings meant for other people, blessings taken from the dead and used against the royal’s wills. He should have laughed. Should have cried. He did none of these things, the stunned silence being broken by the machine extending an antenna that Ardyn had not seen before. That was new.

“Ardyn! Break it, I’ve a bad feeling about this!” Ignis’ voice was rather distant, but at least Omega stopped moving.

He dismissed the shield with a wave of his hand, then narrowed his eyes. Breaking metal was not exactly something that illusions were made for. But the only other magic he could rely on was that cast, empty pool of darkness that ran though his body instead of blood, and Ardyn preferred not drawing his powers from that. It burned his natural reserves out faster than anything else.

Kind of like Omega in that regard. It wasn’t meant for long fights, it was meant to utterly crush the opposition before they could do sizeable damage to him or their surroundings. The only difference was that Ardyn’s powers were not made to destroy gods. Before he could finish deciding whether to use the Scourge’s power against this thing or not a shield not unlike the ones Ardyn had just used covered the machine.

Then it stomped its legs down once more. Turned around to ignore Ardyn once again and instead rushed towards Ignis. The machine was sparking and spewing forth flames as it rushed, and the advisor barely managed to get out of the way. But Omega’s chase was relentless this time, and no matter what Ignis tried – magic, jabs with the Trident of the Oracle, he even tried to fling his knife at it – everything bounced off the machine without doing any harm. He wasn’t going to outrun this forever, and they had no idea how long this overdrive mode of a sort was going to last. As far as Ardyn knew, for a while, but likely not for long times. It had been going for a while now, but showed no signs of stopping.

Which meant he really had to do something now or lose the amusing companion that was Ignis Scientia. Ulterior motives or not, that man had gone to the edge of the abyss and peeked right into it without as much as a shred of fear. Whatever his convictions were, they were impressive even if they had led him to the point where a goddess decided that her time idly sitting and watching it happen was over.

He manifested another shield around Ignis. It was at least enough to make the machine bounce off and turn around again.

“Now, now. I think I have told Shiva as much. But that is my property you’re trying to crush. I’m quite afraid that the only person allowed to crush him into a fine paste is _me._ Whether you were created to destroy gods or not.”

Of course the robot didn’t react. It was rushing towards him, every step with its four legs shaking the earth around this crossing.

“Alas I think reasons are lost on a machine. Which unfortunately means that I’ve no time for pleasantries.”

He dismissed the shield and snapped his fingers instead.

Most people would expect the Accursed to toss Daemons upon Daemons against an enemy. They were fodder, after all, just another side-effect of the darkness that swallowed up the world right now. Ardyn however had never really been one for that tactic. It was hilarious to torment enemies he wanted to wear down with this; he had sent a few morsels against Ignis as he made his way through Zegnautus Keep, would have sent them against Noctis if all had gone according to his plans. But Ignis had repeatedly proven that even the best-laid plans meant nothing against how unpredictable humans could truly be if they had enough spirit.

Omega stopped its approach. Steam hissed out of the machine’s joints, it sunk to the ground. His hunch about the overdrive being limited in time had been correct. Ignis once again staggered away after snatching the dagger off the ground.

Also fine by Ardyn. He didn’t need help.

Which meant he had to draw his powers from the one source he normally avoided unless strictly necessary. The last time he had used this had been back when Ignis had arrived in front of the Crystal. The almost pathetically weak show of slightly wavering darkness had been hilarious – the poor foolish boy had looked terrified for a split second.

Of course, this was nothing compared to what Ardyn _could_ do if he wanted to. Not that he truly ever did.

But desperate times…

The last thing he was aware of was the sound of metal screeching under sheer force, and the rumble of a building on the verge of collapse.

* * *

When he opened his eyes again, he was lying on the ground next to an impressive piece of bent metal. He turned his head to the side slowly and saw a heap of rubble that must have been a skyscraper once, but Ardyn’s memory had an almost impressive hole in it for the time being. His entire body hurt – truly hurt for once, not the dull ache that came with the Scourge in an advanced state – and it felt like someone had stuffed his head with cotton. No, perhaps not cotton. Molten rock seemed more appropriate. It was sluggish and scathingly hot against his skull, but there was nothing he could do against it as he lay there.

A blurry shape came into his view. Some strange noise started up, then stopped. Started up again.

It took him a moment to recognise the noise as his own name being said. The blurry shape was strangely colourless compared to the almost impressive colour around it.

He blinked once. Twice.

Colour? The only thing above him right now should be…

He jolted into an upright position. The blurriness faded immediately, and he saw Ignis taking a surprised step backwards just before he had to turn around and keep himself from immediately throwing up. His entire body shook as he sat there unable to really focus, and even then Ignis’ voice sounded strangely distant. Ardyn barely heard the fact that Ignis was _screaming._ He definitely didn’t understand a word the advisor said, and once the intense waves of nausea faded he raised a hand to shut the advisor up.

Granted, it also brought his thought process to a screeching halt.

“Goodness,” he breathed out as he looked at his twisted and bent hand. It looked like someone had driven a van across it. The bent fingers stood stark against the sky that shone in the strangest shades of violet and blood red above Ignis. That was why he had looked so strangely colourless. “Now that is… unfortunate.”

“How the _fuck_ did you do that?” Ignis’ voice shook, and finally Ardyn heard the terror in that hoarse semi-yell. “It was down for a second, and all of a sudden...”

“ _That’s_ what you’re concerned about?”

The advisor shook his head. “There’s so many things that are freaking me out that I can’t exactly pinpoint it down to _one thing._ So I’m asking the obvious because it might answer...” He gestured vaguely at Ardyn. “… that.”

Ardyn turned his gaze to the sky instead. The sun and moon were normally blocked out by the miasma that enveloped the entire planet. But even through that heavy curtain the outline of the moon had suddenly appeared, blood red and terrifying. An event that hadn’t taken place in hundreds of years – and it explained why Ignis looked so frantic despite the fact he should be exhausted beyond belief. The clouds were dark violet, a stark and sudden splash of colour compared to the utter darkness that had been there just before his memory cut out.

He looked at the bent piece of metal again.

“Omega fled, I assume?”

“You tore off its antenna, sent about a _billion_ swords shrouded in darkness against it, and it barely managed to zap itself away, and _this_ is what you ask? … Wait, you don’t _remember?”_

He dragged himself back to his feet. Staggered. A horrible static noise filled his ears as he stared at Ignis. He saw the advisor’s mouth move, then he stopped, then he started again – Ardyn understood not a word he said. Through the static he heard a cacophony of whispers that seemed to come from all over Insomnia.

No, all over the planet. Voices of people long dead, voices of people who had gone missing, voices of people who had deliberately removed themselves from civilisation before something ugly happened. One voice was a high-pitched whine for a son she had seen and lost, one voice was a terrified apology meant for people that Daemon had torn apart.

Ardyn hadn’t heard that in years. Hundreds of years. There was a reason he didn’t use that power.

He attempted to block the voices out by covering his ears, but all it did was make his headache worse. Ignis continued trying to say something to him but he _couldn’t understand._ The entire world gleamed in a bloody red light and he couldn’t understand the only human being nearby.

* * *

The next time he was fully aware of things was when Ignis dragged him to the Citadel. The advisor definitely looked worse than he had before, somehow, but Ardyn had no clue what the hell had happened.

There was a trail of blood behind them, and Ignis was limping. Still the sky seemed to burn blood red, and somewhere in the distance he heard a _very_ disappointed howl that might have been a mutated Behemoth. Goodness, there were so many of these things these days. It made the fact that Behemoths had been allegedly near extinction across Lucis almost seem laughable.

Ardyn blinked again. At least his head seemed to be back in action rather than full of the voices of the undead and capable of more than a few sentences before everything blacked out again.

“Blood moon. An event thought to be caused by the Scourge itself taking control of the nights that haunt the planet.” Gods, his voice was hoarse. His throat was so dry. Why was he talking, anyway? “Daemons and Daemonic entities such as mutations caused by a Scourge infection gain strength that they did not display previously. You could say that their limiters are off for as long as the blood moon persists. They become erratic, hard to parse. Even a previously laughably weak goblin will have the strength to tear an entire human into ribbons on its own if not immediately taken care of. The best course of action for humans is to barricade themselves somewhere with light, settlements or havens.” Every word was slurred, not that he heard that properly. “People infected by the Scourge also become stronger. Particularly of interest however is the fact that it can accelerate a Scourge infection, no matter how dormant it has been thus far.”

Ignis said absolutely nothing. He silently continued dragging Ardyn, and he finally realised what was going on here. The Daemons had been given strict orders to avoid the Citadel and the surrounding space. Ignis was bleeding, but as Ardyn looked behind them he saw there were several very hungry-looking Daemons that seemed almost disappointed that the bleeding man had made it to this place they were forbidden from entering.

Instincts or not, they at least respected Ardyn’s position as highest-ranked Daemon. Even if there was a red moon above them.

“Say, are you… feeling nauseous? Like time sped up? Like your skin is burning up and something else is trying to claw its way out of your body? Flightiness, dizziness, the strange urge to rip your own eyeballs out?”

“None of the above,” came the hurried reply as Ignis let go and instead tore a sleeve off his shirt. He was trying to bandage the gash on his leg up, it seemed.

“Ah. How disappointing.” It was barely more than a slurred mumble at this point. “Last time this hunter who’d insisted on getting me to the nearest hospital crashed his car and then dug his hands into his face. The _screaming_ was rather unnecessary on his part but I guess… I guess that’s how mortals react to pain. Self-inflicted or not. … Why aren’t you screaming, then?”

Ignis tied the scraps of cloth together tightly and frowned. “Perhaps I screamed and you missed it while you were… staring holes into the air as I dragged you around.”

“… Disappointing.”

Ignis only shook his head in confusion.

* * *

“I mean, other than the fact you attempted to rip my arm off a few hours ago, I assume the answer to that question is ‘I’m fine’?”

“I did… what?” Something in this room smelled… strange. Sickeningly sweet, like burnt flesh.

Ignis was sitting on the ground, a deep frown on his face as he finally looked up from the documents he had been reading ever since Ardyn walked into the room.

“Your memory lapses are starting to get both annoying and deeply concerning, Your Majesty. Is that a side-effect from stasis?”

“Stasis? Why would I...”

The robot. Shiva. Suddenly he saw the building going down the same moment as the antenna slapped on the ground and Omega backed away from him. Ardyn rubbed his temples with a hiss.

“You also lamented the fact that my case of Scourge was not accelerated by the blood moon outside and went on a slurred ramble about a hunter tearing out his own eyes. In _disgusting_ detail.”

He didn’t remember that, but as soon as Ignis said something about the moon, Ardyn had walked over to the window. It was still intact, but just as the advisor had said, the sky outside was disconcertingly violet. Wherever the moon was, Ardyn didn’t see it from here but it was all he needed to know.

He sunk to the floor with a heavy sigh.

Stasis. That explained quite a lot. He barely remembered the last few hours, but according to Ignis it had been _three days._ There were flashes of things he remembered, a sentence that he muttered or a flight of stairs he found himself in front of, but barely anything else. One such spark was just the roar of a Deathclaw on the hunt and a terrified shriek – he didn’t ask what that had been. It was rather obvious; a Glaive or one of the people from Insomnia had been sent a scout to see if the situation had changed and had instead been spotted by a Daemon prowling about.

He rubbed his temples some more as he watched Ignis discard a stack of papers. He noted the bandage on his leg. Ignis in turn noticed that look.

“Just a handful Daemons that thought I would make a good meal while I was dragging you back here.”

Well, having an injury and no other way to disinfect it would explain the disgustingly sweet smell of burnt flesh that had been on his mind ever since he entered this room. Ardyn gagged and put his hands over his mouth.

Not again. He was _not_ going to repeat the incident that had made him finally swear off the powers that the Scourge had given him all those years ago.

Ignis noticed that look and raised an eyebrow.

“That definitely explains a lot of things about what has happened in these last three days.”

Scourge stasis. It wasn’t what Ardyn had called it, but somehow that name popped back into his head. Who had called it that? He had no idea. But it made sense. It made him lose that last shred of humanity he pretended he had, made him drop that human face he spent a good amount of energy on keeping. His hands were more claws than anything else, and now that he looked at them they were covered in a black liquid that could only mean that his entire face had gone completely off the rails. Half a monster, half a human.

So many people clung to the urban legend of Daemons that looked like humans, but there were none that remotely looked human. None except for Ardyn.

He was the grotesque mixture of a man on a mission and a monster meant to end said mission. Whatever had gone wrong back then had gone so wrong that Ardyn had become the herald of the very thing he had set out to get rid of. He’d tried prying an answer out of Ifrit during one stasis session. The Infernian had not even remotely answered him and Ardyn had instead made certain that parts of the Rock of Ravatogh would never again be visited by curious adventurers. He had single-handedly destroyed the last ring of worshippers of Ifrit, those who wanted nothing more than to have the Accursed descend upon the earth and cloak it in eternal darkness.

He’d avoided going into stasis for several reasons. One, it brought out the fact that he was a Daemon. That included an incredible hunger for flesh that he normally could just ignore – he didn’t need sustenance after all. Two, he preferred being aware of what he did. No matter what kind of atrocity it was, Ardyn enjoyed knowing what he had done and stasis generally made it impossible to remember. It wasn’t that he was suddenly growing a conscience, it was more that he wanted to know what he did and how to use it against the people who ruined his life to this point. Three, the blood moon made him nauseous. Four, the voices, though he was able to block them out at this point.

“How long does that usually last?” Ignis finally looked at him. The advisor’s gaze was intense, as it should be for someone under the influence of a blood moon and the Scourge.

Ardyn let out a low groan. “A week. Maybe more. Did I really try to rip your arm off?”

“You growled something about tearing out chunks of flesh with your teeth.”

“...”

“Is that a… regular occurrence?”

He shook his head. “Stasis itself? No. I avoid it for obvious reasons. Tearing limbs off and threatening to tear them apart with my teeth? Maybe. I can’t say. Don’t remember anything and everyone who could’ve known...”

Dead, of course, but he didn’t need to say that.

“Perhaps it would be wiser for you to leave.”

Ignis raised an eyebrow.

“As far as I remember… vaguely… I did get myself into this situation because I was… defending you. Somehow. Whatever I did I don’t remember. Wouldn’t want that to go to waste because I...”

“… I see. But where should I go? Daemons consider me human enough to be prey. I cannot enter havens.”

Ardyn dragged a hand down his face.

“There is one place in Lucis you could go.”

That blank look of horror Ignis had on his face suggested that he was thinking of the only human settlement left. Ignis would definitely not be welcome there, not after he had managed to worm himself out of the righteous judgement that Gladiolus Amicitia had tried to deliver upon him not too long ago. Ardyn shook his head.

“Not Lestallum. No, I’m talking about a place not unlike the Citadel. Something that Daemons avoid. The question is… are you sane enough, or already mad enough to not lose yourself in a set of ancient ruins from a civilisation long departed from this world?”


	30. the dreamscape we left behind

In his dreams he was watching the sunset. He couldn’t exactly move, and the entire region flickered in the odd light of dusk. No, everything flickered as if the earth was burning.

Noctis felt nothing except for the fact that someone stood behind him. That someone felt familiar – too familiar. It wasn’t hard to guess that it was Ignis, but no matter how many times he turned or looked over his shoulders, nothing was ever there. He was all on his own, somewhere in the middle of Lucis. It looked like Duscae of Cleigne, far from the shores. Somewhere in the distance was Lestallum, barely more than a wavering mirage in that dream he was having. The sun never finished setting, however. It permanently shone its gold-orange light on the plains and hills and cliffs created from the meteor’s impact.

At some point he sat down. The Ignis in this dream followed suit – Noctis even heard him sit down, for crying out loud! – but again once he turned his head there was nothing to be seen. Thus he sat there with his head in his hands, the familiar feeling of sitting back to back with Ignis haunting him. This had to be a nightmare.

Then again it didn’t feel wrong. Nightmares always had something strange, off about them. There were no refugees who never made it to Lestallum following him around, faceless humans who did nothing but ask him why they had to die. There were no Daemons that hunted him down, all of them speaking with the voices of people he had known who had died. It wasn’t his father turning into a Daemon, it wasn’t Ignis laughing hysterically as he attacked blindly, not caring who it was that he was hitting.

This was… oddly comforting. He couldn’t see the person he would have called his other half without hesitation even after all that had happened, but it was reassuring to know that he was still there.

Then the earth started shaking. Suddenly the plains vanished and gave way to the crags and cliffs of the Disc of Cauthess. He felt Ignis at his back vanish as he heard the rumble of the cliff giving in. He whirled around to see that he was standing at the edge of where people had buried the Mystic; that ancient and crumbling temple that they had only been able to access because Ardyn paved the way for them there. The invisible Ignis of his dreams had fallen the same way that Noctis when they had first gotten to this place. Except that this Ignis did not have a Gladio to catch up to him on the way down.

All there was now was a yearning abyss that led to naught but the hungry flames that licked up from the very insides of the earth.

Noctis stared up and into Titan’s face.

The Archaean was staring back at him, the expression unreadable but different from the encounter they had had at the Disc of Cauthess several years ago. It also was different from the expression he had had when Luna had approached him after waking him from his slumber.

He looked… sad. For some reason that Noctis couldn’t figure out, Titan looked sad.

Before he could ask about it, his eyes snapped open. He was lying in his bed as usual, perfectly on his back.

The sword leaning against the wall next to the bed reflected the electric lights from the streets a little. Noctis sat up, unable to shake the feeling of someone or something leaning their back against his. Eventually he got up, reached for the sword. The feeling dissipated at long last, and he took a deep breath.

For just a second he had considered going to check if Ravus was leaving the city again to train out of habit. Halfway out the door he froze, remembering what had happened, and fastened his grip on the sword. It had been a while since he last tried to find someone or something who wasn’t here any longer out of habit.

Once in a while however he tried finding the people who were not here. Sometimes he wanted to get advice from Cor, only to stop dead in his tracks and to remember that horrible day. Sometimes he wanted to find Ignis, only to have that image flash before his eyes again, and Noctis went out into the streets.

There was no point in thinking about that right now. Right now he needed to keep his focus, because the group that had gone to Insomnia was still gone. The anxiety about their fates was eating him up on the inside, but there was absolutely nothing he could do at this point. All he could do was wait, and he nearly wanted to curse Gladio for insisting that Noctis had better stay behind to keep Lestallum under control.

But he’d soon realised that it was best that he was there. Tensions were running high with the head of the Glaives out in the field, and Aranea had gone with them because she insisted on doing that. Which meant it was time for the old hatred between Niffs and everyone else on Eos to simmer slightly; something that Noctis managed to get under control by hanging with the groups before fights broke out.

This morning the city was surprisingly quiet for one of the last bastions of mankind.

The City of Light seemed to be still asleep – Noctis was quite certain that he was not up earlier than on most other days, but there was only the odd patrol he encountered on his usual morning stroll.

* * *

Thunder split the skies as the rain continues hitting the roof of the Regalia. He’d been napping, yes, but he could barely remember the last time he’d slept in the car. He yawned and stretched – and froze.

That wasn’t Prompto on the front seat. The blonde was completely absent, and the outside was too dark to see where they were.

On the front seat instead sat Ardyn. He didn’t seem to care about Noctis being awake; his arms were crossed and even as Noctis let out a terrified noise the man did not budge.

Ignis continued driving, even though the storm around them only increased.

“Ignis, stop the car! Where’s Prompto!? Why’s Ardyn here!?”

Gladio beside him moved, and Noctis turned to ask his Shield why Ardyn was in here.

Except that wasn’t Gladio either.

It was this exact moment that he realised he was dreaming again. Why hadn’t he realised it as soon as he heard the rain on the roof of the car? There were no weather changes during the eternal dark. It was always the same, always dark. Why would Ignis be driving the Regalia, why would Ardyn sit there and ignore everything around him anyway?

Why did he have to see the Fulgurian sit in the car beside him to realise that this was yet another dream?

“ _Save your breath, Chosen, for it is they who have long closed their ears to mortals and gods alike.”_

He shook his head, furiously almost. Ramuh had never once acted high and mighty; had always stood beside him when he needed it. There were countless times where he had appeared to save Noctis’ hide; usually when he was somehow separated from the others during a long and straining battle. He had absolutely no reason to bristle like this, yet here Noctis was.

“No! If I just… If I just get a chance to talk to him, I’m sure he’d come home with me!”

Ignis on the driver’s seat turned his head a little to look at the man sitting beside him. Noctis’ heart skipped a beat – that wasn’t Ignis either. That had to be a sick joke.

The eyes of a Daemon, the face of the man he still loved so much it made him sick. Whatever Ignis was saying Noctis didn’t understand, but it did make Ardyn move. A shrug. Ignis turned his eyes back to the street, and all Noctis heard for a few long minutes were thunder and rain, and his own heart beating so loudly he thought it was about to stop completely.

“ _Your heart… it is in the right place. Therein lies your strength, Chosen – and your weakness. Beware those who close their hearts to history in an attempt to derail it.”_

He jerked awake mere moments later, his heart nearly giving in once he saw that he was just in his room. Suddenly it felt very claustrophobic, like a speeding car at night during a thunderstorm, and Noctis shook his head furiously. He wanted that image out of his head. It was wrong, it felt like it was something he had never been supposed to see and then Ramuh had made him see it anyway.

He even left Alba Leonis behind as he almost stormed out of the room, out of the apartment complex he and the others who effectively governed Lestallum had their rooms in. He never left the room without the sword or Luna’s notebook – or Ignis’ dagger. The latter was always in the Armiger, though. He didn’t want anyone else to see it, and the night before he had looked at it again. Maybe that had caused his nightmare.

He almost ran straight into the returners. He wanted to blindly march past the group of people, but Gladio had stepped into his path and Noctis only barely managed to avoid crashing into his Shield.

The serious look on the man’s face was the last thing Noctis could use. It looked… like bad news, bad news that only conjured up the image of rain and lightning all over again. The thought that Ramuh had only been trying to warn him sent cold shivers down his spine as he listened to Aranea and Gladio retelling their stories of what had happened in Insomnia.

Noctis did notice that Gladio hesitated at some point. Mentioned a Daemon of some sort trapping him and the Glaives who had come with him, and barely making it out on his own. He said he did not even consider himself lucky that he was alive; those Glaives had been good people and were a big loss for everyone. The silence in this place was awkward, with Aranea shooting Gladio a strange look. Then she left with the rest of the people, apparently to discuss something like battle logistics – something that Noctis himself wasn’t needed for.

That was the moment that his worst fears came true.

Gladio crossed his arms.

“I wasn’t telling the whole story there. I did run into _something_ in that hallway.”

Noctis closed his eyes. “Ignis, wasn’t it? Was he the...” His dream was flashed before his eyes again, the brightly glowing eyes as Ignis turned to talk to Ardyn with the sound of rain drowning his voice out completely. “… Daemon?”

For a moment Gladio looked surprised, and Noctis’ heart sunk to the ground. There were endless possibilities of what Gladio would say next, but Noctis was expecting that he told him exactly that. That Ignis had been the Daemon that had killed the Glaives who had gone with Gladio, that Gladio himself had only made it out because the Daemon remembered travelling with him.

“No. Ignis was himself. Scourge-infected, yes, but still… human, I suppose.”

Noctis curled his hands into fists. “Infected…?”

“Just as I said. Dropped some pretty cryptic shit overall, but he did team up with me against that thing.”

Noctis fixed his gaze on Gladio, and the Shield flinched underneath the harsh look. “Why didn’t you bring him home, then!? Did he refuse and you just _let him go?”_

“No! No, nothing of the sort.”

His heart was beating faster than usual again. He knew that Ignis and Gladio never really got along when their opinions went apart, and he could imagine what had happened. But Noctis needed to hear it from the horse’s mouth, and thus he crossed his arms. Gladio avoided looking at him.

“You started fighting again once you were done, didn’t you.”

They both usually assumed that no one saw their petty little fights. It was pretty clear that they got along usually, but once the frustrations started piling up Ignis and Gladio were both liable to lash out, and usually at each other. Noctis always caught the differences in how they acted when their frustrations were reaching their absolute maximum limit, and Noctis always knew when they had their incredibly fast and brutal beatdowns. When he had been younger he had thought it was interesting to see how both Gladio and Ignis fought when they were annoyed, angry even. Ignis completely ignored customs then and fought as dirty as a street urchin, something that most members of the Crownsguard noted with no small amount of distaste. Gladio himself turned into a Behemoth, effectively, not stopping until his head hit a wall and mowing down everything except for Cor and his own father.

Once they were older and more mature, Noctis started hating it. The way they attempted to maul one another, only to laugh and then call it a good fight and then acting like nothing had happened. Ignis never acted like that around Noctis, and Gladio always voiced his frustrations with the prince. Why couldn’t they just do the same with each other?

He’d stopped questioning it once they set out. There were other things to worry about, and he thought that he wouldn’t see their petty little sessions because they were on their way to Noctis’ wedding. A quick trip to Altissia, not the eventual odyssey across the country just to reach Accordo.

Gladio said nothing. Didn’t even nod. That was all the answer Noctis needed.

“You didn’t let him go, did you?”

“We… reached a stalemate. In a straight stamina and strength fight I would have one, but Ignis… he fights differently now. I can’t exactly predict what he’s going to do next, and would have lost in the long run. It’s his… home turf. He just said that you’d likely given me the order to return to you alive and in one piece, and used that to bargain with me. I let him go, I get to return to Lestallum alive, basically. … So I agreed.”

There were so many things Noctis wanted to say, wanted to do. He wanted to throw a tantrum, wanted to tell Gladio that yes, he wanted him alive but he also wanted Ignis back, wanted answers to all the questions he had. Why they had gotten to this point, _how_ they had gotten to this point. Wanted his friend to not look at him with that much guilt and regret on his face, wanted the man he still loved so much it hurt him to think about him back by his side.

But the energy that built up within him dissipated and he exhaled slowly.

“The most important thing is that you’re alive. That, and the knowledge that Ignis is alive.”

After all, it had not looked like he was going to survive that wound. Whatever Ardyn had done, at least it ensured that Ignis was still alive. Not that Noctis was happy about that fact. If Ignis owed his life to Ardyn and he was not being controlled, that meant that his own code of honour demanded that he had to stay with him until the favour was repaid.

Noctis looked up at Gladio and nodded.

“Thanks, Gladio. Thanks for telling me the truth.”

* * *

He tried reaching for her. He so desperately wanted to reach her as she floated away, but there was absolutely nothing to be done. Her expression was peaceful, her eyes closed, and all Noctis could do was open his mouth.

Water filled his ears, his nose, his lungs. It was everywhere, but he didn’t feel like he was drowning. The worst feeling was that of his inability to reach her, to hold her as she vanished and tell her that he truly did love her. Not in the way she might have, but he did love her. But he didn’t reach Luna as the darkness of the seas swallowed her up, left nothing but the water around him. There was no one around to yank him out of the water, and he closed his eyes bitterly.

When he opened them next all he could do was cough, cough and retch and hope the seawater got out of his lungs. Once he managed to breathe in again he saw where he was. The Altar of the Tidemother in Altissia, that hellish place of his nightmares where everything started going wrong.

Something heavy was on top of him, and Noctis dragged himself out from under that. Since it was so wet he had assumed that it was the fin of Leviathan he had torn off the goddess when the power of his ancestors had surged through him. But that fin had landed in the same sea that had swallowed Luna up just now, and his heart skipped a beat when he saw the wet, cold and heavy thing that had been on top of him.

Cor.

Noctis gagged, desperately tried to get to his feet. But his body refused to listen to him properly, every limb heavier than his heart was. The Marshal’s eyes were completely vacant and glazed over, the cold emptiness of death long having claimed him. He was staring at the man who had always been there as he grew up, once more reminded of the fact that whatever had happened to Cor, he had been on his own. Somewhere out there, injured and then dead and that was all they ever found. No one ever figured out who or what had killed him, though Noctis always assumed that Ardyn had his hands in this death. That he had made Ignis attack him. Made Ignis kill him.

He continued staring, and then someone grabbed him by his shirt. Yanked him up to his feet. Terror surged through Noctis as the waves kept crashing against the Altar of the Tidemother, and time seemed to slow down as he tore his eyes off the dead Marshal and turned around.

He was met with a familiar face. Ravus, his usual serious expression on his face.

His throat was slit, however. He shouldn’t be standing here, looking at Noctis completely seriously.

“The Niffs, Noctis,” he said, voice surrealistically clear despite all the blood, “the Vesperpool. Tenebrae. What happened to my people?”

Noctis twisted himself free from Ravus, tried to get some distance between him and the High Commander. For a moment it looked like Ravus was about to lunge for him, grab him again; that flash of anger in his eyes not unlike the glare that Ravus had shot him the day the High Commander slapped some sense into Noctis. But then his entire body froze.

“Luna… Lunafreya.”

Then his eyes rolled back, and he crumpled to the Altar just at the same time as an airship crashed into the waves. The storm around them was howling, and Noctis could only stand there with his hands covering his mouth. This was worse than the trial of Leviathan had been to begin with, but there was nothing he could do. The storm seemed to be made of a myriad voices he couldn’t distinguish from one another. One was a whisper that he understood, one that reminded him of greenhouses and less awful times, but his body refused to make him run away. There was nowhere to run to begin with.

Finally the leaden feeling left him as the water rose again, formed a twister around the Altar. Chunks of rock, entire buildings, but they weren’t Altissian this time around. They looked like Lestallum, and the water turned pitch black.

Finally he managed to run. Jumped over Ravus, ignored Cor behind him.

Then someone grabbed him again. Used their strength to essentially throw Noctis back towards Ravus – and a second later something exploded in the place he had been running towards to just a second before.

A thin, shimmering shield had manifested in front of Noctis, and whoever had manifested it dismissed it near immediately.

Up ahead, on the former connecting bridge to the Altar of the Tidemother, stood Ardyn. He held the Trident of the Oracle in his hands, a wide grin on his lips.

The person who had tossed Noctis aside was Ignis. He looked unarmed, but Noctis immediately noticed the one thing that did not look like something Ignis normally wore. On his hand glinted the Ring of the Lucii, the one that Luna had died to deliver to him.

“Ignis!”

But much like the dream in the car, Ignis did not seem to hear him at all. Instead he walked forwards, met with Ardyn. They started a fight that looked more like a dance, and then black water entered his vision, drowned the almost hypnotic fight between Ardyn and Ignis out. Only the howling of the seas remained, and Noctis shuddered. Something cold appeared next to him, and he looked to his side a little. A giant eye.

Leviathan had shoved her head next to him, and he clearly saw a deep wound on the goddess’ face.

“ _Let those whose flames flickered out and those who have forsaken theirs return to the deep they crawled from, foolish mortal.”_

He couldn’t say anything. Suddenly he felt powerless, like his body didn’t belong to himself. He was all on his own, and somewhere beyond that wall of water Ignis and Ardyn were doing something that only Leviathan likely saw. Noctis himself was blind in the dark, blind in the water. A helpless mortal, just like she had called him when he had challenged her with nothing but fear in his demanding voice. He’d never been so aware of the fact until now, and were this any other situation then the goddess would have likely told him that this was what he should have always expected.

“ _A destiny scorned, a history denied. You cannot help those who cast aside that which aids you, Chosen. That is not what the Oracle died for; remember her bloodline’s callings and remember your own.”_

For some reason her voice was softer than it had been when he had challenged her. For a split second the black water gave way to the image of Ignis dangling from the Trident of the Oracle and a triumphant grin on Ardyn’s face…

… and then he was in the greenhouse district. Except there were no plants. All they housed here were pots of water, with hundreds and thousands of small water replicas of Leviathan sprouting from them, floating through the air. Everything was silver and shone in the electric light that somehow seemed to remind him of the sunset this time; calming and familiar.

“ _Perhaps you were the right choice after all.”_

Noctis opened his eyes and all he could do was let out a sob. He was sobbing loud enough for Prompto to come crashing into his room, for Iris to get concerned. Gladio, Aranea. Some Glaives.

He wasn’t alone. That was his strength.

But it was also his biggest weakness, he realised as he cried into Prompto’s shoulder, unable to just _stop_. Those people meant everything to him, and Ignis meant even more to him. And all that did was open him to more pain.

Right now he was just glad they were all here.

* * *

It looked like it was supposed to be cold in here. It looked vaguely like the Citadel – but it was made of ice. There were torches lining the walls but the ice did not melt, and somehow Noctis already knew who awaited him at the end of that hallway. Every step he took echoed; he was definitely not walking by himself now that he listened to the echo. Several people followed him, but after the last deity’s dream he was wary of turning around. It could just be Cor with a hole in his head and Ravus with his throat slit all over again. The ice itself was untouched; no blood, no deep gashes in it.

Which meant there were no enemies around here for the time being.

And Shiva was not liable to attack him or torment him.

Noctis put a hand against the door at the end of the hallway once he reached it, the torches beside it flickering wildly. He saw the people who had followed him’s hands against the door as well – Aranea, Iris, Prompto, Gladio, Monica.

They vanished when he pushed open the door, but somehow he felt that they were still with him.

Shiva waited with her back to him, her form that of the High Messenger rather than the true goddess of ice. This was decidedly less ominous than what Titan and Ramuh had done, and more comforting than what Leviathan had done. Somehow he felt _safe_ around the goddess.

The comfort faded immediately when she turned around and changed into the form of the goddess. It wasn’t the change that immediately put his heart in chains again, it was the fact that beside her stood the Nox Fleuret siblings, Luna to her right and Ravus on the left. They both had their eyes closed, a serene expression on Luna’s face and Ravus looking more peaceful than he had in life. Shiva stepped forwards, every step leaving a sharp and clear clacking sound in the still air of this room that was so unlike the throne room in Insomnia and Fenestala Manor.

She stopped halfway across the room, and then the Fleuret siblings started moving. They walked a little further than her, but they, too, stopped just out of Noctis’ reach.

Then Luna blinked her eyes open, and a cold shudder went down his spine.

They were crystalline, empty and blue. This was not the Luna he’d seen last, in that vision that she faded from his reach from before he woke in Altissia with the Ring of the Lucii she had tried to deliver unto him gone and Ignis taken away by Ardyn. She looked… celestial. Like she didn’t truly belong here, nor truly belonged to the goddess’ side – eyes all aside, it was the same Lunafreya Nox Fleuret who had given up her life for her mission, who had borne the worst cards that destiny played into her hands with naught but a smile on her lips.

“We greet you, O Chosen, on behalf of the Lady of Ice.” She even bowed to him, gracefully and just in the way that he always imagined Messengers to be. So very much like Gentiana, but this time it was Luna who smiled at him brightly instead of Gentiana. “Much like Her brethren before Her, She approaches you in your dreams as to not startle the people around you and to deliver a message.”

Ravus also bowed, decidedly slower than Luna. “We do know that the previous approaches have not been usual, were unsettling at best and traumatising at worst. That is why She chose familiar faces to forward this message with.”

Time slowed to a crawl as Noctis stared at these two Messengers. He realised that they were other people – the voices weren’t right. But they still looked like Luna and Ravus, and seeing the siblings step towards each other and hold hands with those serene expressions on their faces made his insides constrict.

They’d never looked that peaceful when they were alive. There had been a rift between them, and one that they never got to bridge again because Luna died in Altissia and Ravus had to live with the fact that he had failed to protect his sister. Died without knowing whether her sacrifice had been in vain or not.

Those two people he didn’t know inside their bodies started speaking at the same time, and for a moment he thought that maybe it would be Ravus and Luna talking, saying something about what they truly felt.

“The Hexatheon stands behind the Chosen, come what may. The Archaean, the Fulgurian and the Hydraean failed to mention such and therefore forced Her to forward this to you. Whatever happens, the Five who remained stand united behind you.”

Hand in hand, like Luna and Ravus and the two Messengers using their appearance did. Noctis looked at the Glacian behind the Messengers and nodded slowly.

A gust went through the room and the torches went out. All that remained was the soft glow of the goddess of ice, and those unearthly eyes that the Nox Fleuret siblings now had. It had never struck Noctis how much older Ravus looked compared to Luna; especially after he had lived in the dark for so long.

He sunk to his knees slowly, noticing how the Messenger’s eyes widened for a moment. But they did not move, and neither did the goddess behind them.

“Please. Messengers, Glacian.” He took a deep breath and kept his eyes closed. “I thank you for the message. It is… reassuring to know the gods stand behind me. If I… If I might, there is one thing I would… ask for. Just one thing. Just this _once._ ”

The silence was familiar. It was the silence of winter, of snowfall at night. Comforting but also foreboding in its own sense. But silence was not a refusal, and Noctis breathed in slowly.

“The blood of the Oracle. Those two who stood beside me. If… there is… there is a message I would have you relay to them, if possible.”

“ _So speak.”_ Shiva’s voice was gentle and barely more than a whisper. But it was the permission that Noctis needed, and he thanked her quietly.

“… I would ask their forgiveness. Neither of them deserved the end they got. Not Lunafreya, who died while ensuring I did my duty, not knowing that I did love her in many ways. Not Ravus whose death was a waste and left a hole, not knowing whether I would do my duty and make his sister’s death less of a waste.”

For a moment there was no sound. Not even his own breathing echoed in the room, and then he heard the steps.

Those steps weren’t the Glacian approaching. No, it was the Messengers who looked like Ravus and Luna, and then all of a sudden he felt both of them put a hand on his cheeks. He looked up to see Luna smiling at him brightly, and while Ravus’ smile was barely noticeable he too looked anything mad.

“But, Noctis,” Luna began, her voice clear and like the Oracle he had known. That was her voice, and her eyes. “There is nothing to forgive.”

“Our calling was that to stand beside and guide,” Ravus on the other hand sounded different, though it was clearly his own voice. Noctis nearly broke into tears when he realised that he had never heard the man sound so at peace with the world. “Where Lunafreya guided, I stood beside.”

“Fulfilling our calling gave us peace, even if the ends we met were anything but peaceful. They were not your fault – they were preordained. Not even the gods can twist destiny around.” Luna dropped her hand, her smile not wavering the slightest. Then she leaned forward to wrap her arms around him. “It happened as it was supposed to. If only we could have spared you this pain.”

Ravus hesitated for a few moments. Then he also leaned in and held his sister and Noctis close. That was something the man would have never done while alive.

“Keep your head held high, Noctis. Your path yet continues where ours has met its end, but know that there is no resentment from our side. The worst is yet to come. But...”

“You can do this, Noctis. We know you can.”

Noctis let out a wail that sounded very, very undignified. But in this castle of ice no one heard him but the Glacian – the Glacian who turned her back on the scene and crossed her arms.

He did not hear what she said to a torch in front of her.

* * *

His eyes were fixed on the skies above him. The moon was not something he had seen in years, and the light it shone upon the earth now was eerie, unsettling. For the last 24 hours it had been like that; blood red and horrifying. The streets of Lestallum were almost desolate considering the sheer amount of people who lived in the city nowadays, but there was nothing he could do about the moon. All he could do was stand here, with his gaze locked onto the moon, hoping that something would change.

The noises outside were perhaps the scariest part, scarier than the light that so profoundly drowned out the darkness. The Daemons sounded like something was riling them up, and Noctis had spent an hour trying to remember where he had heard that before. Then he remembered. His father had mentioned that once during training, back when Noctis had struggled to control fire. How the moon once upon a time had turned red and it had made the horrors of the night stronger than anything he could have ever imagined. Noctis had always considered himself blessed that no matter how horrible the nights were, he at least never had to see the horrors of a blood moon night.

Noctis nearly jumped out of his skin when someone put a hand on his shoulder.

“Whoa! Noct, calm down, it’s just me!”

He turned around and came face to face with what most people of Lestallum called the technology trio these days. Prompto had his hands up in the air, Cindy was grinning at him and Loqi had his arms crossed.

All things considered, Prompto had reacted rather well to being told where he had been born. He had gone and gotten as much information about it out from the Niffs, had had his fair share of panicked laughter, but within less than a day gone back to his usual bright smiles and optimism. Perhaps telling him that Noctis didn’t care about where he had come from had made that whole thing a little easier for Prompto.

“What’s the matter?”

Those three definitely were geared up for a long trip.

“Gladio and Aranea told us to get your permission too, so… here we are. There’s something we wanna check in the countryside.”

Noctis shot a glance up into the sky, and Loqi let out a long sigh. “Yeah, that’s why Amicitia and Highwind sent us to you, Your Majesty. That moon.”

Three people with the blessings of the Lucii. Prompto was shooting Noctis his usual confident grin, Loqi shrugged at the moon before looking into another street, and Cindy herself only put her hands on her hips.

“’S nothin’ dangerous, mind. Prompto’s just tryin’ t’see if there’s somethin’ y’all missed when ya went t’Ravatogh after that there eruption. If there’s the slightest bit o’danger, we’re gonna return immediately.”

He tilted his head and turned towards his best friend. Prompto’s smile faltered a little, turned a bit embarrassed.

“It was a while ago. But Ravus mentioned that something about the shack we took a break in was fishy, so I was gonna check if there were any clues. For all we know, we missed something there or around Ravatogh that might relate to… the Ignis situation. Maybe the guy Gladio encountered in the city wasn’t actually Ignis. Maybe he broke free of Ardyn’s control there and Ardyn had to infect him with the Scourge or whatever. Anything. But I’ve been wondering about that for a while, and I’d have Cindy and Loqi with me.”

There was no other trio that was as scarily efficient as those three. Ravus and Aranea had been a duo of just about the same efficiency level back when the High Commander had been alive, but the three blonde mechanics had somehow become the strongest force to be reckoned with. Even if the moon was currently making Daemons stronger there was absolutely no way they would just keel over and let themselves be torn apart.

“Prompto. Cindy. Loqi.”

The three nodded.

“Just come back in one piece.”

Prompto crossed his arms. “Gladio and Aranea said the same thing.”

Noctis shook his head. “No, I’m serious. I don’t care about results. Just come back home together. And if you have to turn around not even halfway to your destination.”

Before Prompto could say anything else, Cindy slung her arms around his and Loqi’s shoulders and pulled them together. “Anythin’ ya say, Majesty! ‘n if we get there, we’ll getcha a nice souvenir. Some darn interestin’ rock, or somethin’.”


	31. Your balance is off-centre.

The countryside under the red moon was perhaps the most surreal thing Ignis had seen up to this point in his life. The light was unnatural and upsetting in so many ways that he simply didn’t have the words for the glow that held the country in its unrelenting grasp.

He didn’t really have the time to comment on it either. Despite all his attempts, Daemons simply ignored his commands. If something moved into the way he had to find his way around it – rather hard with a car that definitely didn’t look like it was still supposed to drive. He’d mostly chosen it because he had found the keys to it and it reminded him of Noctis’ car. That one he’d found at an exit of the city once, a broken and bent mess rather than the car Noctis and Ignis had spent so much time in. Except that when he had found it, he’d not shed a single tear over it, unlike all those other times when he came across something from a life he’d forsworn to find a way to safe Noctis.

Somehow, despite Ardyn’s definitely lousy directions, he found his way through the countryside once he had to discard the car and walk on foot.

Ravatogh was perhaps not the easiest ground to cover, but the further he got the more he was certain that this had been done deliberately.

“To think there’s even a haven all the way out here...”

Somewhere up ahead he heard the telltale sound of still water and something large crawling about it – mutated Malboros were definitely not high on the list of things that Ignis wanted to encounter as he continued his stubborn march.

As he had slipped into unconsciousness again, Ardyn had muttered something about the training grounds. Ignis had little to no idea what that was supposed to mean; he had talked about ruins of a temple of a sort, had called them ‘Pitioss’, and vaguely pointed at something on the map. Even with his sharp sight in the dark thanks to his infection, Ignis wasn’t entirely sure what he was looking for.

He avoided the Malboros and ducked behind the jagged rocks. It was that moment that he caught a glimpse of something that looked almost unreal compared to the landscape of Ravatogh; something that was definitely man-made somewhere out here in this untouched wilderness.

His slow march eventually brought him to a building. It stood out, contrasted against the red light of the moon above, and even though this region was anything but cold even in the dark, a deep shudder went through Ignis. Something about this place felt untouched by time, even just standing here. Most Sol ruins were like that, he realised. Steyliff Grove and Costlemark Tower in particular held a similar energy to this place.

Which meant that these ruins were likely also in a surprising state of nature reclaiming it rather than it falling apart because of the war. There was also likely going to be an entrance that previously only opened at night, but now that the sun did no longer rise it was simply open for all who came across it to enter. Ignis carefully approached the steps – there were no Daemons here. The entire place was eerily silent, as if the Daemons were deliberately avoiding it. He definitely felt the urge to turn around as well, but his curiosity had been piqued.

These ruins had to be from before Solheim fell. Not a single ruin in Lucis was free from Daemon infestation; some even had had deeper parts completely sealed off because something terrifying had been locked up down there. Why did the creatures from around here avoid this place, especially now that a living person, no matter how far his infection had progressed by now, was here? Why on earth had Ardyn sent him here when there were other places he could likely wait until the blood moon vanished? How long would that even last?

There were some things that simply didn’t add up. First and foremost, how no one ever found this place. Perhaps it chose the people who saw it – were this any other situation, Ignis would have called that thought nonsense and tried to find a more logical explanation. But after all this time in the dark with nothing but himself and the literal Accursed in a city one could call the city of the dead by now… he could believe that. He believed that perhaps this place did not appear to just about any person under the sun.

Carefully he peeked around the corner after taking a leap across a gap. There was absolutely nothing there – just iron bars. Some were missing or shorter than the rest, which gave him just enough space to squeeze past and stare at an already familiar contraption. It was the locking mechanism that kept Steyliff Grove and Costlemark Tower closed until the moon rose and the night had silenced most of the wildlife. But the doors did not open when he approached them; in fact Ignis was fairly certain that this was just a solid wall.

Solheim’s technologies were not something that any country on Eos could replicate nowadays. Not even Niflheim which gained a lot of knowledge from it had ever managed to do so – only vague understanding of technology, of bygone eras and bygone days. He put a hand against the glowing sigil on the wall.

The lights went off. The floor underneath his feet started rumbling.

“Oh. Of course.”

This wasn’t the first time he’d come across self-moving elevators in ancient ruins. There were entire walkways that collapsed and rebuilt themselves, closing mechanisms that were likely more sturdy than even the most hi-tech lock on the market, walls that only moved if prodded in the right place and that were a straight-up labyrinth if the person attempting to get to its end did either not know the way through or had not wasted an insane amount of time trying to solve it already.

Ignis waited, his curiosity still piqued. Ardyn knew of this place, but he had not once shown more than passing interest in Steyliff Grove or Costlemark Tower. Had commented on the Daemons that had poured out of these places once their doors had been properly opened, yes, but had not really talked about the fact that they were long-abandoned Sol ruins that likely held more secrets than anything else in this world.

The atmosphere changed nearly immediately when the red light of the moon vanished. He felt like he could breathe more easily now, as if something horrible got off his back. Ignis walked straighter now that he was free from the almost haunted countryside.

He raised an eyebrow at what was going on down here, however. It seemed almost like out of a video game that Noctis would spend entire afternoons with, with Ignis sitting on the cough trying to write hand-ins for the Citadel or university, but still he commented on how to solve some puzzles. There were even spikes on the almost comically oversized blocks’ bottom sides, spikes that hit the ground with a crunch before the blocks themselves moved back upwards.

Getting past that was easy enough.

The next room made his breath catch in his throat. Just like back when they had first gone into the main room of Steyliff Grove, this place had an almost overwhelming look to it. There were only specs of light; some torches that likely did not burn with actual fire but rather something magical. He could see the room clearly despite its likely choking darkness – yet another thing he ironically owed to Ardyn, somehow. As terrifying as a Scourge infection was at its very base, it was proving rather useful in many ways.

The first thing he truly noticed in the room was this peculiar swarm of butterflies dancing on a ledge that he could not reach that easily.

The second was the red wall that reminded him of the shields that Ardyn had manifested before he went into stasis while fighting Omega.

All of a sudden his curiosity was replaced with cautious fear. His steps echoed through the still room.

Then everything seemingly came to life within an instant. A thin whisper rose as Ignis made his way to the only staircase leading down. Some oily substance covered the stairs, but somehow it was not slippery; against all logic and reason. Still he went carefully, since despite seeing in the dark the pit beside the stairs looked positively endless.

He stopped when he reached the bottom of the stairs. Thus far it had only been his own steps and the sounds of more blocks likely with spikes moving, but now he heard a strange buzzing sound. It reminded him of Lunafreya’s voice before she managed to get through the veil between his life and her death to speak to him, and he put a hand against his temple.

“Lady Lunafreya, if you have something to say, please do so now.”

She didn’t answer him. In fact, she didn’t seem to be here at all.

Whoever or whatever was trying to contact him continued doing so for a solid five minutes or so – and then he heard a thin voice. Ancient.

It whispered in a language he did not understand much of. Some words sounded familiar, somehow, but he wasn’t entirely sure what language this was.

Silence once again.

Then a thin whisper rose once more, this time speaking words he understood vaguely enough – that voice was speaking Niff to him, rather than the universal language Eos shared or Lucian.

He continued walking as the voice suddenly switched into something he soon recognised as Accordan. He made his ways past moving blocks, moved up a slope. He was staring a rock face of some sort in the face when the voice once again fell silent and the strange presence vanished. He gave the statue a careful push. It moved slowly into the bright red light that blocked his progress earlier.

Then both vanished in a bright flash that made him cover his eyes.

When he reached the next ledge after climbing up, he sat down. Crossed his legs, crossed his arms. Ardyn had had a reason to send him here, but truth be told Ignis had no idea what it was. If he wanted to keep Ignis safe from daemons then just sending him into the general vicinity of this place would have been more than enough. But Ardyn had specifically told him to go inside and see what to make of what awaited him.

Ignis had no idea what to make of this so far. The only thing he really noticed was that this was familiar somehow – unsettlingly so. It reminded him of Ardyn’s magic; illusions come to life and leaving everything just ever so slightly distorted. Except in this case everything was distorted. There were entire chunks of crumbling rocks seemingly suspended in thin air somewhere so out of reach that people who could not see in the dark likely never saw. The way this place was set up in general made it look like a test of sorts, but for what reason? Ancient Solheim never truly built things without a reason. Steyliff Grove had been a temple to honour the dead, Costlemark Tower had the looks of a building meant to watch over vast stretches of land, perhaps part of a wall of some sort.

What exactly was this place that Ardyn merely called Pitioss Ruins supposed to be? There had to be _something._ Some sort of meaning. But the more he thought about it, the more his thoughts started going in circles. The only thing that his mind consistently conjured up was how similar this place was to Ardyn’s magic. The very atmosphere was the same; not that he had ever seen Ardyn build an entire illusion that affected more than the man’s own appearance. But the blows delivered by the fake Armiger had felt the same, back when he disposed of the machine that had been supposed to make Verstael Besithia something strong enough to take on the gods.

More strangely glimmering butterflies had made their way over to him, but now that he looked closer those weren’t exactly butterflies. They definitely looked like some sort of insect, but not something that Ignis had ever seen around Lucis. He tried to touch one, but his fingers missed them barely and they simply continued dancing through the air around him.

Then the thin whisper rose again.

“ _We greet you, child of the land.”_

Ignis blinked.

There was no one around – this was a case like King Regis and Lady Lunafreya. A quiver went through the atmosphere in this place, like a ripple in an otherwise still lake. The torches upon the walls flickered heavily for a moment, and for a moment he thought the dust and rubble in this place rose from the ground for a split second before falling back. It would have explained the strange clicking sound he now heard.

“ _Long has it been since last a pilgrim made it to these grounds.”_

“… Pilgrim?”

“ _One who watched the country from up high, who saw the light from down below, one who stood upon fire and breathed under water. We had thought the children of the land incapable of completing these travels.”_

Ignis held his breath. Of course. A pilgrimage across Lucis; whatever these places were these voices considered him someone who had deliberately made this journey, and entirely on foot. It was something people expected from the Oracle, travelling across the continents she was visiting and generally staying on foot so the general populace could meet her on her way. That was ever how the Fleuret family operated, that was how quite a few of the Oracles died way before their time. But whatever resided within these ruins thought he had done something similar, visiting special places for… some reason.

“ _Yet here one such child stands, with a bowed head and a bowed heart perhaps but here he stands. But a pilgrimage on its own is not enough to gain access – one who survived the trials must have mentioned where to find these hallowed halls. Speak! Who sent you?”_

He stood up and bowed, properly and politely this time. Whoever was speaking, they were still invisible to him and therefore he kept his eyes on the ground. What exactly was he supposed to say here? It felt like there was something missing, some sort of… title, perhaps.

Then he recalled Shiva in the High Messenger’s body, her voice soft but cold as ice. How she said that the gods could suffer the Sage, and the Accursed, but not an apprentice to the Accursed Sage. Perhaps that was what this voice wanted to hear, and for another heartbeat he remained silent. Then he raised his head again.

“I was sent here by my… master.” That sounded like it was the correct word to use here, even if it left a bitter taste on his tongue. “… Sage Ardyn extends a greeting to those who inhabit Pitioss still, though he could not make the journey himself.”

Another ripple went through the room, this time something that felt definitely chillingly familiar. A low hiss echoed somewhere nearby, though it sounded more like air escaping something rather than some sort of creature that was getting released to tear him into pieces.

“… _Proceed then, apprentice of the sage.”_

* * *

He stopped at some point and stared at the doors. It had already been a handful dangerous and close jumps, but this was getting ridiculous.

Right now he sincerely wished he could warp like the Glaive and Noctis could. That was something he had never been taught – why should he have learned it anyway? There was no way an Insomnia born-and-raised noble had the same abilities as the almost infamous Kingsglaive; there was one Insomnia resident in the Glaive for every twenty outsiders. Even he himself had believed that there was absolutely no way that he could learn that straining art. Why should he even learn it? He was the advisor, not an assassin of some sort.

Whatever these ruins were supposed to be, they certainly cost him a lot of energy. It wasn’t enough to make him collapse, but enough to leave a nagging feeling of tiredness in the back of his mind. But no matter how much he rested, it never truly went away. It messed with how he perceived whatever the hell was going on around him.

Just once he had lost his footing and thought that it was all over now. The yearning black abyss beneath him seemingly swallowed everything around him up – and as he closed his eyes he suddenly felt hard ground again. A loud thud echoed through the room as Ignis got back up with a confused wheeze, but nothing had changed. Everything had continued as if he hadn’t just fallen into what looked like a bottomless pit from here, and he smacked his own face before continuing. This was definitely reminding him of how Ardyn’s magic worked by now; and not in the good way. This was the same brutal destructiveness he hid underneath the layers of illusion.

The rest of the fight against Omega had been short and brutal and utterly _breathtaking._ Mages were rare, and all of them had somehow been linked to the Crystal through a royal catalyst. Ignis himself was no exception from that, there were no mages other than the Fleuret and Lucis Caelum bloodlines, and even the Lucis Caelum bloodline generally borrowed a lot of power from the Crystal.

Ardyn meanwhile had no connection to the Crystal. He fought with a brilliance that very few people could match, and no matter how much he hated the man he had to admit that Ardyn’s magic was quite literally bewitching in many aspects. The way he had simply pointed at the machine and the very air had bent to the Accursed’s will – no matter how much he said that that element belonged to Daemons nowadays, there was no denying that once upon a time someone had taught him how to control it properly. The blinding lights, the shockwave that had nearly sent Ignis flying backwards as hundreds upon thousands of crystalline blades first lopped the antenna off and then violently crashed into Omega over and over. How immediately following that a blast had indeed sent Ignis flying, how the air crackled and sparked as Ardyn sent forward what looked like an entire miniature planet of unidentifiable matter; he’d later realised that it had been the same kind of energy that Iron Giants usually used to draw in assailants. That was how the smaller Daemons that accompanied these creatures usually got the jump on whoever it was they were fighting.

It didn’t leave as much as a scratch on Omega, but the sheer energy had made the building nearby collapse. When the rubble settled Ardyn stood there for a moment longer; his aggressively glowing eyes locked on the machine for a heartbeat. Then Omega vanished, disappeared the same way it had appeared earlier when it had followed Shiva. And then the Accursed had collapsed, a wild look in his eyes as he stared at the moon. For a few terrifying moments Ignis thought that he would have to thank the goddess for getting rid of the Accursed; and then a violent spasm shook the man as he closed his eyes. A howl in the streets, and the atmosphere shifting was what made Ignis turn his head towards the sky – just in time for him to see the moon for the first time in _years._ And it was red, red like Ardyn’s usual weapons of choice. A deep, unsettling colour.

He let out an annoyed huff as he looked back at the situation on hand. He needed to get up on this door that somehow had opened in the strangest way, and then hope there was not a bottomless pit beyond that. Looking at the room at large he realised that there was a way to get there; but not exactly the easiest under the sun and definitely not a series of precise jumps Ignis wanted to make.

Whoever had designed this place truly and sincerely hated whoever came here, he mused.

“ _It is to challenge the minds of mages like yourself, child. To see whether they are capable of thinking straight in situations where their mind screams illusion, to see if they can withstand the power they would claim for themselves would break their minds.”_

He shook his head at the sudden intrusion. King Regis had not exactly been intrusive whenever he spoke. It was just the voice of the man who raised him. Lunafreya seemingly had some more control over what she did to him, as seen by her messing with him for the longest time before finally speaking to him. But these voices were loud, crystal clear, and even echoed in the room a little. Yet they seemed to be entirely in his own head, harsh and sudden and unpleasant. Voices from beyond a veil that he couldn’t quite see, no matter how well-adjusted to the dark he was nowadays.

“I’ve been wondering,” he began as he turned to face the only way up in this room and hoped he wouldn’t stumble over his own feet, “what exactly this place is. You say it is to challenge someone, but who? For what reason? You said I was a pilgrim; are only these allowed in here?”

He heaved himself up and steadied his balance for a few moments before continuing onwards. This was going to be a strange jump; the angle was what worried him most.

“ _Apprentice of the sage, you of all children to come here should know what powers he commands.”_

“… Yes, yes I do.”

“ _To learn how to control a natural talent, a training ground is needed for a mage. Illusions bewitch both caster and opponent; a bewitched caster is useless.”_

“… I think I understand.”

He leapt and prayed that he managed the jump. He landed on the door with a dull thud and staggered forwards, staring into the room up ahead with raised eyebrows.

“ _Brilliant minds break easily under stress.”_

Ignis could almost picture it. A bunch of children or teenagers, young adults. All called pilgrims and left in this place to figure out their powers. Whatever these trials were, they had most likely been created by the people who had mastered this kind of magic. To see through the illusion and find the real path, to ignore what seemed illogical and press onwards even if it looked like it shouldn’t be possible.

“ _This is to strengthen them – or break them entirely.”_

Only the worthy were allowed to leave, then. Ignis nodded as he continued onwards with his eyes focused on the road ahead. He tried not to think about it too much, about what it implied. If Ardyn had been in here, had been through here, it explained how he had become so powerful. The voices had claimed that no one had been here for quite a while, yet they had known who he was talking about when he said Ardyn’s name. Which meant Ardyn had likely been in here when he was still a mortal over two thousand years ago, likely as young man back when he had started his travels.

“ _Only those who saw the country as it is are allowed within. Even those who do not command the magic trained within; for a training ground is a temple and all pilgrims are welcome to challenge themselves. It is without power that they leave, but a gift they will be given regardless.”_

He could imagine that.

Ignis continued.

* * *

There was something about this statue that really made him uncomfortable.

The fact that gravity in this place seemed to have been messed up didn’t bother him, the fact that he had, several times, fallen to his apparent death only to hit the ground at an almost randomly chosen point nearby where those glowing insects danced didn’t bother him. But this statue did.

He raised a hand on his forehead and attempted to wipe the dirt off. He’d barely managed a jump earlier and proceeded to lie on the ground for a few minutes there. Now he was staring up into that marble face, the handiwork of someone who was undeniably skilled in making statues, but something about this felt _wrong._ This was rather reminiscent of the Old Wall in several ways, now that he was glaring at it. Attention to detail, delicately crafted. He’d felt bad about beheading that statue much earlier, but this one…

This one only made his mind jump in circles. Now that he stood here all he could think of was that he hated this thing, had no idea how much time had passed, why he was even going through here. He could have stopped at the entrance and simply slept. Good gods, he wanted to sleep. Wanted to close his eyes and let everything so far just be a nightmare. He’d open his eyes in Zegnautus Keep and confront Ardyn all over, he’d put on that damned ring he carried with him even now, and hopefully go down after defeating him. He’d have saved Noctis, and then finally could die.

He slapped himself. It echoed through the room like laughter, and Ignis curled his hands into fists.

“Stop thinking about dying already, you moron!”

It wasn’t like he was going to survive anyway. That was why he wanted to lie down and never open his eyes again; he was going to turn into a Daemon and there was absolutely nothing he could do about that. Unless he found a way to save Noctis.

For a while he’d thought he would figure it out in here. There was something in the back of his mind, something about illusions and how to break them, how to undo the very fabric of reality with the ring, but the thought had vanished as soon as it had popped up properly. He couldn’t remember what it had been and instead darkness had crept into his thoughts.

He’d bowed his head to Ardyn to buy some time for himself. He needed the time to think, and it had been _years_ since he’d said that.

Ignis sat down in front of the unsettling statue and glared up at it some more before sighing in defeat.

He’d really not made any progress on that front. Slowly but steadily a horrible thought crystallised itself up in his head, and he looked at the statue once again.

“Can mages undo divine decrees and curses?”

For a moment he thought the statue smiled at him. _“The darkness that flows through your blood is something a healer can remove.”_

“No, I’m not talking about a… measly infection. I was talking about the source of that. Could someone who made it through here... destroy that?”

A long creak. Ignis stared at the statue and decided to hurl his entire body against it to demand an answer.

The statue simply creaked, fell backwards slowly, and he realised that this had been the way forwards. He cursed under his breath as he continued his way under the strange gravity, noted how empty this room was in general and how bottomless darkness he couldn’t even see through was slowly but steadily becoming overwhelming.

“ _Not on your own, you cannot.”_

“But I could?”

“ _To rule time one needs three other schools combined. Crystalline, illusory, and luminous. There are no records of a single person mastering all three.”_

Crystalline, that much was obvious. That was the magic that the Lucis Caelum family controlled. The name alone meant that it came from the Crystal; and the Crystal only answered the calls of those who were descendant of Somnus Lucis Caelum.

Illusory, well, that one Ignis knew first-hand. It was something that apparently anyone with a talent for magic could master, if these training grounds were to be believed, though there were a good amount of people who had a natural talent for it. Ardyn had apparently been one such person, and since the voices had not promised him anything if he reached the end he figured that he was someone who also could learn it if he had enough time.

Luminous on the other hand was the magic he got stuck on. As he continued his almost defiant march through this place he tried to think of what it was that they would call _luminous._

It wasn’t until he watched the final door open that he realised what it was. There had only ever been one answer.

The Fleuret family controlled something that was not quite like the other schools of magic. Ardyn had commented on it once, just as a throwaway comment while they were in the field. Something that Ignis had barely considered worth remembering.

They had been keeping an eye on Ravus and Aranea, who had been taking care of some sort of mission nearby. Just far enough away that the aware dragoon and High Commander did not catch them, but still close enough to listen in on their conversations.

Ardyn had said that something about Ravus had become almost infuriatingly _bright._ _Luminous_ even. Ardyn went on to say that until Altissia Ravus had not displayed even as much as a _shred_ of talent for that sort of thing, and now he was there, blasting things with the holy light that his family commandeered. Something that only Oracles could do.

Ignis dropped to his knees in front of that door and let out a barking laugh.

Was that the solution to his question? Was that what he should have done to save Noctis? Figured out illusory magic to combat Ardyn, teach Ravus how to control his birthright, and then go face the Accursed as the three of them with Gladio and Prompto as back-up? Could the three of them defy the destiny that even the gods bowed their heads to?

It was _ridiculous._

There was absolutely no way this was the answer. He was going mad from the isolation, from the Scourge infection that seared in his veins, from this place in general. He needed to get _out_ more than anything else.

Thus he turned to where he thought he heard something. Upwards even though he exit was so close now. More jumps. He ignored the voices trying to call out for him to stop to receive what he had come here for, and he leapt out of that hole in the wall and fled the ruins.

He just wanted to return to Insomnia and think about it like a rational person, not a madman locking himself away.

The moon was gone, but Ignis didn’t care. He needed to run for once. Needed to clear his head.

* * *

Quite a few times during their travels, Ignis had started to wonder how exactly this ragtag group had ever managed to live as long as they did. He was a strategist, yes, but that didn’t mean he was always in full control of the battlefield. That was one of the worst things about being a combat strategist rather than staying behind. Sometimes it was hard to adjust the field to a winning situation.

Somehow they had always made it out.

Eventually he started attributing it to the fact that most Lucians used rather ancient weapon forms. A shield was fantastic, yes, but sometimes they needed the power of modern weapons rather than tradition.

Which meant that Prompto was a wildcard they had introduced to their own lines, something that not even Niflheim could predict properly. Granted, he was the reason they were able to track them in the first place according to Ardyn, but the fact that there was someone who used guns and machinery rather than yet another spear or sword remained. It all balanced out in the end; tradition was tradition for a reason and Gladiolus Amicitia was not going to let himself get shown up by a commoner-turned-Crownsguard.

But Ignis cursed his luck more than anything else in the world right now. At first he had thought he imagined the voices nearby, and continued trudging onwards back to the car he had taken to this place. The Rock of Ravatogh lay silent and told nothing of the eruption that had taken place here a long time ago – why on earth would there be people here other than him, especially now that the moon was back to normal? Unfortunately for Ignis he had not imagined the voices and barely managed to duck behind a rock. But he had made a noise, and now this strange trio was alert that something was moving nearby.

Cindy Aurum he could understand. The woman had always been full of energy and the fact that she would get over her fear of the dark to help people was something he would have expected her to do. She looked right in the garb of a hunter, with a determined look on her face and that almost ridiculous-looking weapon on her back.

Prompto Argentum being the one who walked with her for the most part also made sense. He had been infatuated with her from the second they got to Hammerhead, no matter how exhausted he had claimed he had been. Granted, it had made him the butt of several jokes from Gladiolus and Noctis, always joking jabs at how obvious his crush on her was. He looked… surprisingly well for someone who likely knew by now that he was a clone of a mad scientist.

Loqi Tummelt on the other hand made the least sense. He was also the one who had noticed Ignis – or rather, something that was moving – and who had alerted his two companions that something was up here. The Niff looked well for someone whose entire body was marred with burn scars; it just didn’t make sense that he was here with one of the people who had caused him this injury.

But here they were, systematically searching for whatever Daemon they thought was stalking them. Ignis just couldn’t run away; Prompto would nail him in the back with a bullet faster than he could run. After his encounter with Gladiolus he sincerely doubted that Noctis would have given the order to catch Ignis alive and unharmed. Perhaps he had even ordered him dead because it was better to lose someone than have a completely unpredictable monster on the loose.

He could easily call for some Daemons, but the fact that they were three remained. One of them would see him properly, and if they focused on going after him there was no way he would escape them.

All he had for himself was the dagger that Ardyn had given him all this time ago, and the Trident of the Oracle. His own dagger he had lost when he had killed Ravus, it was most likely in Noctis’ possession now and would remain there until the end of time.

He dragged his fingers down his face.

The others had always called him the most rational of the group. The one who could predict how a fight would go. Right now he cursed that skill, because he saw no way out for himself unless he set out to kill all three of them. Cor and Ravus were already high on the list of things that Ignis regretted enough to consider ending this charade right here by himself, but adding Prompto and Cindy to that list would certainly make him go absolutely insane with guilt. And guilt was the last thing he needed now – he had no idea how much time had passed while he had been in these ruins, but after he had calmed down and rested for a moment he had realised that his entire body felt stranger than it had before.

Like his limbs weren’t entirely his own.

He took a deep breath.

Cindy alerted Prompto and Loqi that she had heard something, and the trio stuck their heads together for a moment before all three of them raised their weapons.

It was Loqi who eventually called “Stop hiding”.

Ignis meanwhile sighed.

“If you had just continued on your merry way, we could have avoided this, you know?”

A surprised gasp. This almost felt like an ironic echo of back when he had come out of hiding when Iris had joined Loqi and his group of Niffs against the Daemons. The Niff right now also seemed to remember that encounter, if his suddenly narrowed eyes were to be believed. Prompto stepped in front of Cindy.

“Ignis.”

“But no, you insisted on searching for what had made the noise, and now we have to solve this like barbarians instead of civilised people.” He shrugged. “Because unfortunately you will not let me go if I ask for it, and I will not come with out even if you ask for it.”

“No,” Prompto shook his head, “we can still do this like civilised people. We’re three, you’re one. We outnumber you, therefore you’re coming with us.”

“But do you overpower me?”

The three blondes looked at one another. Ignis once more sighed and took the Trident of the Oracle off his back.

“We’ll see. I somehow doubt you do.”

Cindy snorted. “Big talk for someone who’s all on his own! But we’ll take ya out, no prob; ‘n then we’ll drag ya home while yer out for the count. You guys ready?”

“Born ready, Cindy!”

“I suppose.”

Ignis only shook his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tl;dr version: pitioss is a training ground you are only allowed to enter if you've visited four other places in lucis (which ones should be fairly obvious in three cases, the fourth will be mentioned either in chapter 33 or 35).  
> the magic you hone there is the illusory kind aka the one that ardyn uses, and he was the last one to complete the trials in there.  
> non-mages can attempt this challenge, and they'll be given something useful to compensate for their troubles
> 
> if ignis hadn't fled he'd have learned how to use illusory magic too because by any means he is considered a mage. but he didn't stay so that power wasn't awakened.  
> but ill go over pretty much everything again with ardyn at a later time
> 
> the only pre-release card i'm pulling here:  
> written before episode ardyn, aranea, luna, noctis. how they defeat ardyn and get noctis still alive at the end of the alternate ending idfk rn. the whole "ignis needs to learn illusory, ravus needs to be taught luminous properly, and they need to work together with noctis aka crystalline so they can completely undo ardyn thanks to the combined effect of these three magic schools being TIME MAGIC" is just headcanon


	32. our dance under the blood red moon

Not even three hours after they left, anxiety set in.

Now, he wanted to believe that everything was going to be just fine. There had never been any issues that had ever really gotten in their way. If there was one group of people that was as efficient as Cor Leonis had been back when he was alive, then it was going to be Prompto, Cindy and Loqi. Prompto had learned of his origins and had had enough people to support him through that, Loqi had looked like a heavy weight had been lifted off his shoulders once he said everything he knew, and Cindy just seemed happy to be around and be as helpful as everyone else despite having started training later than the rest.

Before Noctis could wander off into parts of Lestallum that were full of civilians, someone grabbed him. Only one person right now had the gall to do that kind of thing – only one really had _permission_ to, and Noctis turned around with a deep sigh.

He was more than surprised to see that it hadn’t actually been Gladio. The Shield was standing behind his sister, his arms crossed and rolling his eyes.

“Well, you let ‘em go then, I suppose,” he said as Iris beamed at Noctis. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be sulking.”

Noctis narrowed his eyes. It wasn’t sulking, and Gladio knew it was. After Cor, Ravus, and all those others that left the city with a smile and a reassurance that they’d be back and then never returned, Noctis had grown weary of this business. While people repeatedly said that this was how the Glaive had always operated, he didn’t exactly want a repeat of what had eventually driven a good amount of these men and women to betray their fellow Glaives and turn to Niflheim for revenge on the crown. All those deaths they could have avoided, all those people they lost because they never arrived here on time, all those others who voluntarily left the city or begged a Glaive to kill them and burn the body… it was dire. It made him want to bang his fists against the Crystal that still did not answer his questions, made him want to summon the four of the Six who answered his calls if the mood struck and make _them_ answer for this.

Of course he couldn’t do anything like that. If the King of Light lost it in the middle of Lestallum, all that would remain would be chaos. If he had gone missing before darkness fell then people could have clung to the hope that he would be back, but being a centrepiece of Lestallum as it was he just… couldn’t.

Gladio knew that and he noticed Noctis’ annoyance at his choice of words.

It was Iris who defused the situation after taking a glance at her brother. She put her hands on her hips and cleared her throat.

“Good going, Gladdy. Anyway, Noct. I was wondering if you’d like to come with us. Like, get your head out of the gutter, and see if we can learn anything about the moon by ourselves in the next few days while Prompto and the others are out.”

He looked up once more. Bright red, like blood – according to Aranea that had been something that had happened occasionally in the past, though it had stopped for a rather long while. At least several generations she had said before leaving, claiming that she had been asked to come to Accordo by one Weskham Armaugh through Cid Sophiar.

He was curious about it.

If Ardyn was behind this, for what reason? If he wasn’t, why did it affect Daemons then?

“Are you… going into the Crown City for that?”

Iris and Gladio exchanged a glance.

“Monica is there. We’re in constant contact with her and the other Glaives who went there, and the civilians still stuck in the city are taking care of them. She asked us to check the countryside for any sort of hint about this, because Insomnia’s kind of… too dangerous to crawl in about right now.”

He nodded.

Monica had not been Cor’s left hand just because she looked good. No, she had a fantastic head on her shoulders, and that had gotten her the support of the Pious what seemed like ages ago. That was why he trusted her to not do anything foolish. But by the gods, they had to get these civilians out of Insomnia at some point. Everything else would be too dangerous, because their supplies had been running low by the time the Glaives with Gladio and Aranea had reached them. Smuggling people out of the city would likely be considerably less hard than smuggling resources into it.

“Makes sense. Yeah, I’ll come with you both. Anyone else?”

Iris scratched her chin.

“Not really, no. Together with you we cover the biggest weaknesses we both have.”

Someone who could heal – as Noctis had learned courtesy of the Oracle – and someone who could use magic properly. Together with Gladio’s defensive tactics and Iris’ offensive approach, they effectively made what had soon become the scouting party norm.

Prompto’s group didn’t really have a mage. But they had access to the royal Armiger that was stuffed to the brim with restoratives and flasks of elemental energy – and machine weapons with them.

He nodded again.

“Cool! We’ll start mapping a route in a few hours, and then go tomorrow.”

* * *

For a while it was quiet. Upon leaving the city they had immediately gotten into a brawl with a bunch of particularly vicious goblins that seemingly kept spawning without end. There hadn’t even been a Nidus nearby, which only raised more questions that none of them wanted to ask. Whatever this was, it seemingly defied the rules they had learned to follow in the last few years. Following that they had always heard something nearby, had spent a lot of time making certain that not a single Daemon got the jump on them.

But for now, it was quiet. Eerily so. Noctis and Iris spent a good amount of time looking around, stabbing weapons into half-dead bushes that could be concealing a Daemon on the prowls. But nothing happened. It was just the three of them, and even Gladio lowered his shield eventually.

If there was someone controlling them around, they made a point in keeping away. Noctis even went as far as cautiously calling out for Ignis, vainly hoping that perhaps he might answer. When he got no answer, all Iris did was put a hand on his shoulder and shake her head.

It was so unfair, he realised. Both of them had seen Ignis, had made their own deductions about his actions. Iris still believed that Ignis wasn’t fully in control of himself, that what he had done to Ravus had been something that Ardyn had made him do. After all, why would Ignis break down into hysteric laughter completely unprompted? He was too calm and collected for that, but after being forced to do something like this… Gladio meanwhile said that whether Ignis was in full control of himself or not was irrelevant. He’d betrayed the crown and killed Ravus, and that was inexcusable. He needed to be brought back home and brought to justice before that Scourge infection killed him. He’d been that blunt about it yesterday.

If they ran into him, they’d be dragging him back.

Noctis wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed that in this silence Ignis didn’t answer him.

It wasn’t until a few minutes later that something actually started making noise again that he realised he was both. Relieved that Ignis was nowhere to be found because it meant they didn’t have to beat him into submission. And disappointed because he missed him more than anything else on Eos. Disappointed because the last time he had seen Ignis was in Gralea, standing before the Crystal with Ardyn, and then that strange behaviour… with Ardyn only laughing.

He dragged a hand down his face as the Daemon that had jumped them finally went down. These things were vicious, but nowhere near as striking as that last memory he had of Ignis. That stark contrast between the man he loved and the man who dragged him backwards.

He’d not spent a lot of time thinking about it when it had been recent. His mind had been in too much turmoil, too many people had avoided the question, and then he had jumped to things as Ravus had said. It hadn’t left much room for anything other than missing Ignis and not understanding his reasons. And even though Iris and Gladio had run into him, neither of them had gotten one thing out of him – an answer. He deliberately danced around the issue.

Ignis only danced around the issue when it was something deeply personal.

Noctis took a deep breath as he put Alba Leonis back into its sheath.

Which meant that if he was in full control of himself even now, he was putting on a mask that wasn’t his and stayed in character for… whatever it was that he was planning. There was of course the chance that Ignis was truly being controlled by Ardyn, which would explain some of the more odd mannerisms he displayed, but… truth be told, it was likely guilt. Ignis did not run from fights he picked, unless something drove him off. He stayed away when he felt guilty, was liable to brood when a situation had no answer, and acted plain odd when his actions had consequences he had not been able to foresee. It was a side of the advisor that few people saw and even fewer understood; Gladio himself definitely never made an effort to make sense of that. He and Ignis had a different kind of relationship. And no matter how friendly Prompto and Ignis got, at the end of the day the two people that understood the advisor best were Noctis and his uncle.

His uncle was dead, of course. But Noctis was very much alive.

Something about this entire thing reeked of Ignis hatching a very poorly thought-through plan and it backfiring spectacularly.

But all he could do under the light of the blood moon was speculate as another wave of Ahrimans scuttled at him, and Iris gave a warning “Incoming!”.

* * *

The man leaned backwards in his chair with a sigh.

“No. I’m not _that_ old, lass.”

Iris blushed, obviously embarrassed, but Noctis knew that Cid was anything but mad right now. The man was worried; he could see it in the way his brows were constantly furrowed. After all, Cindy was all he had left of his son, since they had to leave everything behind in Hammerhead when they evacuated. Noctis had consistently reassured him that they were going to take Hammerhead back before long, but the man was still less than pleased about that. Now that displeasure had given way to worry.

Gladio had suggested they go find Cid and ask him if he knew anything about the blood moon. He was one of the oldest people around, after all; perhaps his grandparents had told him about that. If they had lived during the last time the moon had risen in deep crimson rather than the gentle white it normally was. It had been Iris who had opened with that question after greeting the man, and he immediately answered with that.

For the next few minutes they remained silent, with Iris awkwardly sipping her glass of water while Noctis thought. They did need Hammerhead before they could seriously evacuate those who were left in Insomnia. Reclaiming an entire outpost and making certain that power was restored there was going to be a division of labour that they could not afford right now. Noctis had tried to plain it properly but he had hit every snag and every impossibility on his way there. Aranea had promised him to help with that, however. The mercenary was many things, but the fact that she was a logistically gifted woman made him wonder where she would have ended up in the world if it hadn’t been for the war. The search and rescue business suited her so much better. Even just plain transport suited her so much better than being a mercenary.

Cid sighed.

“I do remember readin’ ‘bout it. Vaguely. Said pretty much the same darn things y’all’ve been spoutin’, though.”

Noctis nodded. “Figured as much. Still didn’t hurt to ask.”

The worry faded from the man’s face a little as he watched Iris still nervously sip her water and Noctis nodding to himself trying to figure out what the moon meant. For a while they sat there in silence, waiting for Gladio to call for them or something else to happen, and finally Cid let out a snort.

“Y’all’re so much like yer parents, I can’t stand it.”

Iris dropped the glass. It shattered on the ground and she jumped to her feet with a yelp, then immediately dove for the broom in the corner. All Cid did was laugh, however.

“See, lass, Clarus was pretty much the same yer age. Cocky ‘n confident on th’outside ‘cause he was gonna be Shield of the King. The kinda idiot to blurt out awkward questions first ‘fore anyone could figure out ways to make ‘em sound less awkward when the public eye wasn’t on ‘im.”

“He… really was? I… I had no idea. He was always so… big and strong and...” She sounded completely flustered; poor Iris’ face was completely red. “Serious. I mean, when he wasn’t messing with Gladdy and me… at home where only… Jared and later Talcott saw...”

“An’ you. I said it was like they took yer dad and kicked the dignity outta him back when we met for the first time. I was wrong.”

Noctis blinked a few times.

“Reggie had less dignity than ya. At least at yer age.” A small pause. Noctis didn’t miss how Cid closed his eyes with a sigh. “Who know what ya’ll be when yer older.”

Iris had finished getting the glass into a neat heap and had grabbed a cloth to get the water. But she also paused to look at the man with a puzzled expression on her face as Cid sat there with his eyes closed and his hands folded on the table. Something about this was odd. Unsettling even.

Before Noctis could figure out a way to ask what this was about, the man’s eyes snapped open again.

“But yer brother, lass, that’s the one who get Clarus’ emotional constipation _and_ Cor’s thick head. Yeah, they ain’t related but it’s pretty clear which two thickheaded numbskulls taught the boy.”

Noctis and Iris looked at one another, then at Cid.

Then all they could do was laugh as the man went on to say that it was a miracle neither him nor Weskham had gone completely insane before they officially finished their travels together.

* * *

“Maybe we should at least get closer to Insomnia. The city itself is still too dangerous with that infernal moon, but… Monica said that maybe we might find something around Hammerhead.”

That was what Iris said when they returned and she went to get a connection to the people in Insomnia again. Aranea had not returned yet, and Noctis was hesitant to leave the city unguarded, but Gladio had immediately dashed any worries. No matter how many bloody moons there were in the sky, the Daemons still did not tread upon havens or brightly lit places. Their plan was to get to Palmaugh Haven and use it as a base of some sort. After all, barely anything left the city and even fewer things went in. For a few days they would set up camp there and see if anything of note happened – be it giant Daemons leaving or entering Insomnia… or the Imperial Chancellor and the Lucian Advisor.

They had left with that, and told the higher-ups to tell the same thing to Prompto and Aranea should they return, but there was absolutely nothing to be done. Whatever mission Aranea had gone on she was likely going to be in Accordo for a while, and all things considered Noctis was happy about that. She needed a distraction, desperately so. And a distraction that was important and hopefully ended in success for once was going to be the best remedy for her.

She felt like she had failed, after all. Failed to keep a promise to Ravus, in some way. Blamed herself for his death.

Noctis had had the chance to hear it from the gods themselves, from _Ravus_ himself, but Aranea had no such opportunity. Anything else was going to sound like empty words, empty comforts.

Prompto on the other hand might return and immediately bounce here. Then it would be almost like back when they had travelled Lucis together to get to Cape Caem with Iris. All those impromptu fishing breaks, all the flat jokes that made most people in the car groan, all the times they had to stop because the empire found them. The only thing missing would be Ignis and the dreadful fact that they were all barely coping with having lost their home. No matter how bad the circumstances had been, Noctis remembered that part of the journey as the thing that had been the most fun. Just him and his friends, with the empire occasionally reminding them of what had truly happened, but in general it had been the road trip he had imagined when he set out from Insomnia with the others.

Iris pat his back as they switched driver about halfway to Leide; Gladio took up the driver’s seat for once and Iris and Noctis sat in the back. She didn’t say much, but her smile was comforting.

She probably remembered the same trip he did right now, back when they had been twenty and fifteen; she probably saw her younger self squashed between Noctis and Gladio, with Prompto loafing about on the front seat and Ignis keeping his eyes sternly on the road. But they were nearly twenty-six and twenty now, and Gladio was driving. The front seat was empty and Ignis’ status was just about as puzzling as the blood red moon above their heads was.

The journey itself was surprisingly quiet. Just once or twice they had to leave the car to fight their way through an impromptu road block; a maelstrom of Daemons they couldn’t just drive over, but the rest of it had the occasional Daemon attempting to stop them but fleeing from the headlights.

Leide itself had changed precious little. It was still mostly desert, and even though the temperature had fallen a lot since the sun stopped shining down on them, it was warmer than the countryside had been. Lestallum was warmer because of the lights and the sheer volume of people there, but Noctis hadn’t expected this place to still be this warm.

Of course that temperature right now was nothing compared to the almost brutal Lucian sun. This was what Noctis would have called freezing back when his biggest worries had been getting to Altissia and whether the stupid suit fit him or not. He almost let out a long sigh when he remembered that. If only none of this had happened. Not even the wedding. He would have been perfectly content to stop the war, yes, but all of this had needlessly thrown first Lucis and then the entire world into turmoil.

Iris stopped the car.

Palmaugh Haven was another place that seemed like it belonged in the memoirs of an old man rather than part of Noctis’ journey. He remembered Prompto dragging him along and back towards Hammerhead, remembered how Cindy had appeared almost out of thin air and how flustered his friend became once she appeared. How breakfast had been done by the time they were back and Ignis had only raised an eyebrow at Noctis dragging his feet behind the very excited Prompto, and instead of an answer as to where they had been all he got was a long yawn and a childish chortle of amusement. The sun had been so bright back then, making this part of Leide shine with the sandy colours of the surrounding areas. Insomnia in the distance had glittered too, the Wall had shone in the vibrant morning light.

The Wall was gone. Some of the larger buildings he remembered from back then were missing, half-collapsed or otherwise bent in the distance. The blood moon above their heads shone brightly, but the light was not comforting, energising or reassuring in any way. The rocks and cliffs jutting out of the ground around here were ominously reddish instead of warm sandy brown. Instead of the nearby fauna trudging through the dust in the morning all he heard was the distant chatter of Daemons that were overstimulated in some way or another, and a cold shudder ran down his spine as he dragged himself and the supplies up on the Haven.

They set up their camp in silence; Gladio likely remembering the same things that Noctis was. Iris looked sombre; she had not gotten to enjoy the countryside of Leide at all. She had fled with so many others, had been packed onto a truck to Lestallum by Jared together with Talcott. Had watched how Cor and Monica had said that they would not be continuing this travel and instead went back to Hammerhead to contact Noctis, then immediately left to be at the royal tomb to give him guidance when all he had had been seething rage and grief. That was all Iris remembered; the travel to Lestallum, the fear. How the news said that Prince Noctis and Lady Lunafreya were both dead, and how she nearly believed that nonsense until Talcott quietly reminded her of the fact that he had not been in the city at all and that the empire was likely spreading falsified information as they attempted to get their hands on him proper.

It was Noctis who eventually cut through the heavy silence at Palmaugh Haven.

“I’d say we should scope the area a little once we’re properly rested. Just to make sure that we really have a good view of the street and the surrounding area.”

Gladio nodded in agreement, and Iris hummed a little.

They both looked a little more relaxed now, however. The three of them were on edge, remembering things that they had not particularly wanted to remember, but soon enough they started talking. About weapons, about Lestallum. If it weren’t this dark then it would have been amusing to hear Iris talk about Talcott as if there were three Amicitia siblings instead of two. But the moon above their heads reminded them that there would be no sunset. There would be no Prompto returning with a wide grin after having gotten a good photo, there would be no Ignis impatiently tapping his foot as he focused on preparing breakfast while everyone tried to get him to tell them what it was that he was making.

* * *

Daemons that scuttled about.

Three Glaives, five civilians, one stolen but functional vehicle.

More Daemons.

If the wind still went as strong as it did in this particular place, then Noctis was rather certain that they would have seen a bunch of dust storms as well.

But after three days, they had not figured anything out about the moon above them. Noctis was unable to sleep, rolled around in the tent until eventually he got up. They had gone to sleep a while ago, Gladio and Iris both falling asleep rather quickly. The moon had looked kind of odd, as if it was wavering about somehow. Like a mirage, as they had been common in Leide until darkness had fallen.

He pushed out of the tent. Ran a hand through his hair and rummaged a little through their equipment.

He stopped when he brushed past Alba Leonis. There were a few odd things happening all at once, and his mind started racing for a second. First, he felt something in the depths of his Armiger echo hollowly. Like someone pulling a weapon out of it, confidently despite the worry that seeped through it. Second, he heard Gladio snore loudly, and Iris let out a groan. Third, there were no other sounds.

Fourth…

He slowly stood back up and turned to look at the sky.

For the last few days it had always been the same image; the moon back after so long without it. Blood red and ominous, like a warning sign. Whatever it warned about no one really knew, but it was enough to drive the Daemons all over Eos completely crazy. Somehow he had gotten used to the eerie light it shed upon the land.

But there was nothing now.

The moon had vanished once more, leaving nothing but the battered skies covered in heavy clouds with miasma particles and what Sania had called clumps of unidentifiable bacteria floating through the still air. Noctis held his breath as he watched the odd dance of these things in the air, the silence almost deafening all of a sudden.

Which was just about the worst thing. The silence.

It never meant anything good when the surroundings went silent. Generally it meant that something large was incoming. Iron Giants, Red Giants. Horrible creatures twisted beyond recognition, with fangs and claws and spitting venom. Noctis paced around Palmaugh Haven for a few heartbeats. As long as he was on this place he was safe, but for a moment he considered checking if there wasn’t a better vantage point. After a few more paces he stopped with a grumble and yanked a knife from the Armiger. He didn’t even care that it was Ignis’ this time, and instead hurled it at a lamp post that was still surprisingly straight despite all the obvious beatings it had taken over the last few years. He perched on top of it with a frown, uncertain to explain the sudden sense of dread that almost choked out his thoughts.

There was absolutely nothing on the road to Hammerhead. Still nothing made a sound; therefore there could be nothing behind him on the road that led to Insomnia either. And if something decided to jump on him, safety was only a short warp away from here. The Haven lay as silent as before, with Gladio and Iris still in the tent and not stirring.

He turned around and looked at the street leading to Insomnia.

“First rule of a hunter; on a hunt, never go alone. Even if you are just trying to scout ahead, it is tantamount to suicide.”

The world turned as he heard a chillingly familiar sound. Like glass shattering just behind his back, and then a weight pulled him down. More glass shattered as Noctis landed on the ground with a surprised yelp, but he immediately jumped back to his feet and drew Alba Leonis.

The elegant sword betrayed how bad his entire body shook. Not that the person he was now pointing the blade at particularly cared about that – they saw in the dark after all. For a moment everything stood still, and Noctis heard his own heartbeat. Then he reached for the dagger again and tossed it, his surroundings shifting as he warped.

But something grabbed him by the foot, yanked him out of the warp and slammed him into the ground. Before he could even breathe in again he felt a foot slam onto his chest.

“Second rule of a hunter; use your voice. Running away’s all fun and games, but there are some Daemons that can cut off your escape. _Shout for help while attempting to flee.”_

Noctis grabbed the leg and attempted to wriggle free. He didn’t yell for help yet; he was trying to parse this situation.

And finally Ardyn Izunia removed the foot, only to lean down and yank him upwards. Noctis had forgotten how _tall_ this man was, until finally his legs were dangling in the air.

Whatever his intentions were, the man looked rather disappointed. Something about the way he looked was off compared to the last time Noctis had seen him, however. He was paler, his breathing seemed oddly shallow compared to before. Even his voice was peculiarly raspy, as if he had either not spoken in a while or had shouted quite a lot. Whatever it was, maybe it meant that Ignis had finally fled and they had missed him while they were in the tent.

Ardyn tossed him away. Noctis landed on his feet, though pain shot through his back as he rebalanced himself.

The man still held himself in the same way, however. If Noctis didn’t know what he had done, hadn’t witnessed him stabbing Luna in cold blood, he would have been vaguely happy to see the Chancellor of Niflheim. While the man had been nothing but a nuisance during their journey, he had always been helpful. Yes, that smile was infuriating and yes, just as Ignis had said he presented a problem and not a solution, but at least he was not a Niff openly trying to murder them. Facade or not; for a while they had cautiously trusted the man because all he ever did was help them on their way rather than throw up blockades and mock them as they tried to find a way through or around that.

All he saw right now was the man who had ironically waved farewell to Luna in Altissia after having been the one to injure her. The man who had driven the world to the brink it was teetering on now, the man who had separated entire families with his actions. The very man who had plotted all of this.

Noctis missed the feverish look on Ardyn’s face. He definitely was scanning the area as well, until finally he gestured at the haven and the tent with the Amicitia siblings inside.

“Well then.” It was barely more than a croak. It made Noctis wonder what the hell he had done to his voice. “Are you going to call for your friends or are you going to run where none but your companions can reach you?”

“If you want to see me running, forget it.”

Not after he had been grabbed out of a warp. Very few people were fast enough to manage this kind of thing – Clarus Amicitia, Cor Leonis, Nyx Ulric and Titus Drautos were the only four who could reliably do it back in Insomnia before the fall. All of these people were dead. Which meant that Ardyn was a considerable danger to Noctis; who relied mostly on his warps to cover ground or to get away for a spell. It was good to have a flexible healer, after all.

“Bold words for a king without a kingdom.”

He drew Alba Leonis and pointed it at the man. Ardyn not once flinched and continued standing there without as much as batting an eyelash. For a few moments they stood there like that in silence, with the infinitely older man glaring down the Chosen.

Noctis meanwhile scanned the battlefield. Perhaps in the vain hope that Ignis was around somewhere, that he would rejoin him and tell Ardyn to get lost at long last. Of course, the Accursed noticed that.

“I am quite afraid that the spectator you are hoping for is not here.”

“So he broke free from your control.”

“Whether he did or not, does that really concern you? You have more pressing matters to attend to.”

Something dark and ominous rose behind Ardyn. It looked like his own shadow at first; but there were no shadows like that in the dark. Noctis knew he was staring at Daemonic magic in its purest essence right now; and he had no answer to that. He couldn’t manifest magical shields; and he hadn’t brought an actual one because Gladio was with him on this travel.

The only thing he could hope for was slipping through Ardyn’s grasp or for Iris or Gladio to get up and alert the other.

One-on-one, he knew he couldn’t defeat Ardyn. Not like this. Not after everything the Hexatheon had told him.

“Just too bad you haven’t found the Ring of the Lucii yet.”

Noctis blinked. “Neither have you, then, right?”

The man grinned. It looked… surprisingly tired for someone who had a mass of energy writhing behind him at even the slightest twitch of his hands. “You’ll have to beat that answer out of me, I’m afraid.”

Chosen and Accursed stared at one another for a few more heartbeats.

“Alright, then! Bring it!”

His voice echoed through the dark as he and the swirling mass of darkness lunged forwards at the same time.


	33. CHOSEN

For a split moment he felt like he had forgotten something. Whatever it was, it couldn’t have been too crucial, because the next moment the thought was gone and with it the sudden flare of anger.

* * *

He was fairly certain this was his work. Even though there were a hundred, a million Daemons stronger than usual creeping through the city, none dared enter the Citadel. The walls stood, and with it came the unspoken agreement between Accursed and the creatures he made stronger with his mere presence, the fact that his stasis right now amplified that by quite a lot: no entering these grounds. They were his territory, best left to decay on their own rather than being slowly but steadily hollowed out by Daemons.

Which meant only one person could have broken his hand and taken a good chunk of the statue of the Mystic with it. That person being himself.

If Somnus tried to say something, it fell upon deaf ears. Or rather, ears filled with an intense static.

Gods, he needed to _leave_ this city. It was driving him insane and the memory lapses didn’t help his case at all. Thus he followed Ignis out. Slowly. Unsteadily. Not remembering that Ignis had left nearly a week ago, not about a day as he assumed.

Funnily enough, not a single Daemon stood in his way. There weren’t any hunters, Glaives, civilians… or deities either.

* * *

If the sun still rose, quite a few people would have been here. That infernal man with a fetish for rare stones, for example. That woman with the bright smile and the even brighter head on her shoulders wasting her talent behind the counter at the Mother of the Pearl instead of becoming the world’s most famous cook. Tourists, even imperial soldiers searching the crowd for the missing prince. Someone would have passed here, but there was absolutely nothing left at this point.

The low static had finally stopped buzzing in the back of his mind, and all he could think of was how dry his mouth actually was.

Not that there was anything at Galdin Quay that could help him with that.

The Accursed needed no sustenance. Not even water, technically. His case made it rather clear why the Scourge turned living beings into monsters that needed nothing; a human’s body wasn’t built for long times without water. Especially not bodies that were capable of accessing any sort of magic. And though he did not need it at all, his body screeched for just a drop of water to soothe his raw throat.

At least this new and uncomfortable situation meant that he would not completely space out. Ardyn was certain that this would at least keep him focused on what was around him; he’d likely screamed his throat raw in the first place and did not remember a thing about it.

Galdin Quay looked nothing like it had back when he had intercepted Noctis what seemed like an eternity ago. There was no crowd, first and foremost. A good chunk of people who were infected had chosen this place as the place to turn because there were quite a few discarded piles of clothing around. Some were already so stained in black grime that they must have turned just shortly after the sun stopped rising.

The chatter in the world had died down. The few last bastions that humans took shelter in, most prominently Lestallum, were mostly silent. Though they were alive they did not sound like it, and instead everything seemed and felt like Galdin Quay here. Desolate. Left in a hurry, with fear consuming the people as they fled. Yet he felt… nothing. He didn’t miss the chatter. Didn’t miss the sun the slightest bit, didn’t miss when there were people just about everywhere and nowhere all at once.

Every corner of Lucis and Tenebrae reminded him of a man and a woman whose faces were burnt into his mind, but there were likely quite a few others that he should have remembered. People who did not betray his trust, all of them herded into a system of caves and left there to rot after his banishment. But not even Gilgamesh’s face came to mind when he thought of these people. He did not remember a single one of them, and even the Blademaster’s voice had completely vanished from his mind. Not that anyone remembered these people in turn. Only the victors decided the course of history, and by any means – Ardyn had lost despite not having played this game properly. As far as history was concerned he was not there, would never be there. There would never be the Sage standing forlornly in the middle of an abandoned building trying to remember faces; there would only be the Accursed, laughing atop his throne of bones or whatever extraordinarily ridiculous historians would come up with.

In turn, no one would remember the Chosen as the same idiot who spent an afternoon fishing to make cat food of all things.

Ardyn turned around sharply. For a moment he thought he had heard someone.

The bad thing about being in stasis was that he did not feel magic that way – not even something normally as overbearing as the divine. If Shiva chose to approach him now…

That was why he had sent Ignis to Pitioss. Once inside not even the gods could track a human being; they would know they were inside but otherwise they might as well have been dead to the outside. That was why there were so very few mages that challenged these ruins, and the ones who succeeded and received guidance in how to bend reality could be counted on one hand. Ardyn was the fourth, and the third had lived before the fall of Solheim. There just never were children who had the natural magical skill, and those who did never finished the pilgrimage.

Costlemark Tower and Steyliff Grove proved to be two opposing elements on that pilgrimage; a temple dedicated to remembering the dead and a tower built to help protect the living. The Daurell Caverns and the Rock of Ravatogh meanwhile were the country at its highest and the country at its lowest; they required skill, perseverance and luck, an ability to see in the face of danger and in the dark. Only then did the voices approach those who were able to control magic. Some they chose not to speak to, but those they deemed worthy were given the challenge.

Quite a few people went mad in there. Some others spent so long in there they all starved to death. There were even rumours that once a pair of friends went inside and never returned because they killed one another down there.

Vaguely the memory of him not telling anyone about this trip bubbled up to the surface. Only a priest at a shrine nearby, a caretaker of some sort. For a moment he could almost imagine the region, the shrine itself – a split second later it was replaced by a memory of fire. Whoever had told him about the place had died at the hands of someone else years after Ardyn returned.

Ardyn dragged a hand down his face. Stasis was miserable, stasis was awful. It always made his thoughts swim around, made something from the depths of his memory bubble up and vanish before he could make sense of whatever it was. His due punishment, a reminder that humans were not supposed to live for all eternity.

There was no one but him here. If there was a deity nearby, they were making a point in keeping themselves hidden from his sight, which meant there was nothing of the sort nearby. Perhaps a Daemon had followed him in.

For a few heartbeats he started into the dark, waiting to see if anything happened. All he heard was a low hiss somewhere in the back of his head – then silence. Perfect, all-encompassing silence. Suddenly his limbs felt less heavy.

He let out a low groan as he straightened himself up.

At least this nightmare was over. No matter in wasting his time thinking about things way in the past. No matter what had happened to the priest who told him about Pitioss, the fact that he was the last person to succeed in claiming that magic for themselves remained.

Though he did not doubt for one second that the voices would accept Ignis as challenger and that Ignis would succeed. The fifth. Finally one to break the unlucky number of successors to a magic most arcane and terrifying.

* * *

He’d quite literally hijacked a car. That had to have been a new low, but Ardyn did not want to _walk_ all this way again. The moon was slowly vanishing again, the blood red light dimming out and slowly but steadily getting blotted out by clouds of miasma and particles. It wasn’t until he saw a low light up ahead that he stopped so suddenly the car went off the road. Another husk to join the rest, he surmised as he climbed out.

There had been no hunters when he had dragged himself along this path a while ago. He hadn’t heard a car either; wherever they parked it it was out of his view from here. He watched as something inside that tent moved.

And nearly started laughing.

Of all people. They had an entire pool of people to draw from in Lestallum for reckless ventures into what was considered an enemy stronghold. He had already been pleasantly surprised to see that the Chosen’s direct underlings did not simply shove the work off to the others while they entered Insomnia. But this? This was ridiculous. Reckless. Dangerous, even.

He waited with almost baited breath to see what Noctis would do. Much to his delight the Chosen did indeed leave the safety of the Haven. On his own even; whoever was in that tent would be in for a very rude awakening once the foolish king without a throne would call for help. If he was clever enough to call for help in the first place. Either way, Noctis stared into his vague direction for quite a while. Ardyn could just picture how the man’s eyebrows were furrowed, the thought that perhaps the Accursed had left his hive for once not even once crossing his mind. He could have ended this entire charade now before the gods ever got their chance, but truth be told… he really only wanted to check one thing.

Whether Noctis had the Ring of the Lucii or not.

Without that trinket he was useless. Yet there had not been a single instance of it in the last few years, almost suspiciously so. Someone or something was keeping it from either Ardyn or Noctis – not that Ardyn could even use it to begin with. He had considered just about every person under the sun. Had suspected Ravus. But there was no telling whether Noctis had actually received the ring and was still to scared to wear it or not.

Noctis turned around.

He made his choice in the exact moment. About three hours had passed since the magic in his body started thrumming again instead of filling him with static, so this was perhaps not the wisest course of action. Still, he warped, made certain he crashed into Noctis to get him off that lamppost.

“First rule of a hunter; on a hunt, never go alone. Even if you are just trying to scout ahead, it is tantamount to suicide.”

He warped once more to land on his feet rather than on top of Noctis, and the supposed King of Light landed with a yelp. Nevertheless, his reaction speed was impressive; he near immediately whirled around and had the High Commander’s sword drawn. Just too bad that Ardyn had already returned his own weapon to the ether and left Noctis standing there quite puzzled for a moment. A few heartbeats, nothing more – Accursed and Chosen were finally staring one another down, trying to size one another up.

He had made certain that he stood between Noctis and the easier warp back to the haven where his friends were. Still, he admired the fact that Noctis eventually chose the wisest option; retreating or getting aforementioned friends.

It didn’t change the fact that Ardyn knew how warps worked. Much like Cor Leonis and Clarus Amicitia he knew what to expect from a warp, how they were timed. He warped himself like Titus Drautos and Nyx Ulric did.

Thus he simply fished Noctis out of the air, slammed him on the ground. The Chosen barely had time to react before Ardyn brought his foot down on his chest.

“Second rule of a hunter; use your voice.” Gods, he hated how raw his voice sounded. But such was the way after stasis. “Running away’s all fun and games, but there are some Daemons that can cut off your escape. _Shout for help while attempting to flee.”_

He watched Noctis futilely struggle under his foot for a moment before removing it and yanking him up. Ardyn was quite literally only playing around as he hoisted the Chosen into the air; even though he was older and stronger now he still made the same mistakes as he did back then. Guided by emotions rather than anything else; and it was obvious that he was trying to stop himself from seething in rage.

He half shoved, half tossed Noctis away and watched the Chosen stagger a second. That infernal back injury Niflheim gave him as a child, most likely. Gods, they had nearly broken the only person meant to withstand the onslaught of the Accursed. If only he had controlled these fools better...

“Well then. Are you going to call for your friends or are you going to run where none but your companions can reach you?”

For a moment the ghost of an idea crossed Noctis’ face. Ardyn had seen that quite a lot during the war between Niflheim and Lucis; usually the youngest soldiers on the battlefield looked like this whenever they had a bright idea that almost always ended with them dead on the ground and nothing gained. Either side had these dramatic heroics of younglings desperate to prove their worth, desperate to regain fallen ground. At least Noctis did not act upon whatever idea he had.

“If you want to see me running, forget it,” the king chose to hiss instead.

“Bold words for a king without a kingdom.” That at least got a reaction out of Noctis. The young man drew the sword that the emperor had given Ravus.

How beautifully ironic it was that Noctis chose to continue carrying that weapon. A weapon forged in the empire, a weapon meant to cull the people Noctis was supposed to lead. … No, not ironic. Fitting. It was fitting, Ardyn realised. The Lucian king united the people of the world under his banner. Even the Niffs the Lucians, Tenebraens and Accordans hated so much were now a part of Lestallum. They were one people rather than four; instead of divided by war they were united under the dark.

He noticed Noctis scanning the area. That glimmer of hope, of desperate desire to see someone other than Ardyn on the opposing side. He looked like a lovesick puppy for a second, and if this weren’t the man chosen by the gods to end the Scourge, he would have started laughing. But this, as fitting as the sword he drew was, was pathetic. Utterly pathetic.

“I am quite afraid that the spectator you are hoping for is not here.”

Disappointment. Then relief. Then another ghost of an idea – he hated how easy Noctis was to read.

“So he broke free from your control.”

Perhaps using magic so soon after leaving stasis was not the brightest idea he had ever had, but as Accursed he would rather not have to deal with bright things. The only thing he still refused was to call upon the true powers of the Scourge, the very selfsame power that had helped him drive away Omega before entering stasis.

Thus he called on the more familiar, fickle and fleeting power of illusion. It answered as ready as ever, a reminder that once he had been the Sage rather than the Accursed. A reminder that he had bested the ruins of Pitioss.

“Whether he did or not, does that really concern you?” For someone not versed in the other schools of magic, this must have looked like he was truly calling upon Daemonic energy. Noctis’ eyes went rather wide once he caught the illusion, either way. “You have more pressing matters to attend to.”

By now it should have been obvious that there were two ways this was going to go, at least according to Noctis. One, Ardyn won this if he intended to fight this properly. Two, he managed to make it to his friends.

But there was a third option, and the one that Ardyn had come here to learn about in the first place.

“Just too bad you haven’t found the Ring of the Lucii yet.”

Unfortunately… Noctis only stared for a moment.

“Neither have you then, right?”

Ardyn cracked a grin. He was seething; the ring was quite literally the last thing that Noctis still needed and something or someone was keeping it from the King of Light. He had considered just about every person, including the gods and even _Ignis._ But none of them were likely candidates. The whereabouts of the ring remained a complete mystery; not that Ardyn was supposed to find that accursed little trinket in the first place.

But it would inevitably find its way to Noctis. It _had to._

“You’ll have to beat that answer out of me, I’m afraid.”

The silence of this place was rather choking now as Chosen and Accursed eyed one another; cautiously in Noctis’ case and furiously in Ardyn’s.

“Alright then!” Noctis’ pose changed, and Ardyn made the illusion behind him quiver in anticipation. “Bring it!”

He directed the energy forward to slam into the ground just at the same moment Noctis lunged forward.

* * *

If nothing else, he was skilled nowadays. Stronger.

Ardyn had spent an egregious amount of time keeping tabs on the prince of Lucis back then. He had seen the almost clumsy struggle against the Archaean, had almost considered asking Titan or the rest of the Hexatheon if their chosen one was a sick joke of some sort. He had decided against it once he saw that the boy fought better when with his friends, slowly but steadily realising what way he needed to push the boy into.

This man was almost good enough to keep up with the Accursed on his own, driven by an intense desire to get away unscathed and managing it by himself. But still, Noctis was on his own and Ardyn had the spite of two thousand years by his side. Without the Ring of the Lucii and the last of the Hexatheon, the Chosen was doomed to fail here.

He seemed to be realising the same thing when Ardyn sent a volley of blasts into his general direction. At least he tried to make a warp past the man again to get to his friends, and found himself once more yanked out of it and slammed on the ground.

This time he at least had the bright idea of _screaming for help._ Not that either of his friends in there answered him right now. But hearing him call for his Shield and that man’s sister at least solved the mystery of who he was travelling with.

Once more he brought his foot down on Noctis to pin him to the ground. The Glaives were trained in the finer arts of using weapons to dodge blows; it made them rather slippery bastards. Noctis was obviously trying to conserve his energy, for phasing consumed quite a lot of energy compared to short burst warps.

“Is that truly all you’ve got? Is that what the world and the gods waited for? Two thousand years years of hopes and prayers, and this is the best you can do?”

Noctis writhed on the ground with a growl, again trying to worm his way out. Ardyn made a point in increasing the pressure before leaning down a little.

“Pathetic. Utterly pathetic.”

A father’s despair had turned a sword dull before it even was out of the furnace, and now Ardyn had to figure out a way to whet it before something else wore it down. Truth be told, he had considered going against the gods more than once. But in the end he always decided that no, it was simply too much work to win the trust of that idiot descendant of his brother. His own relative so distant the relation might as well be non-existent.

“I would have hoped my _darling family_ would put up more of a fight. But alas, the second choice remains the second choice; that much is clear.”

Finally Noctis decided to struggle harder, eventually even managed to warp a short distance away without proper aim. He looked dizzy, disoriented maybe, and all Ardyn could think of that this was supposedly his relative.

“Family!?”

“Oh, Noctis. Noctis, Noctis, _Noctis_. Why do you think the Lucis Caelums have only one child every generation? So the gods cannot repeat the mistake they made with Ardyn and Somnus Lucis Caelum of the Izunia family. The king you call Founder, Mystic? I called him _brother_ once.”

He hadn’t even properly gotten to congratulate… his brother and his wife on their child. Not that he remembered how that woman even looked, what her name was, how on good earth she had ever wound him around his brother to begin with. Much like whoever had told him of Pitioss that woman was a faceless entity without a voice, unimportant in the grand design of things. Hells, Ardyn didn’t even recall if he should be directing his anger at his nephew or his niece.

Another wave of illusory darkness quivered behind him as Noctis stared at his opponent.

There it was. That emotion that he always hated most about the Chosen.

All that _fear._

King Regis had made certain that Noctis was as human as the rest of his people. Rather than a prince who faced everything head-on with only the well-being of his subjects at mind, he had raised a completely normal kid. A boy who grew depressed when lonely, who had spent the better part of his childhood years dragging his future advisor around the Citadel laughing and getting between everyone’s legs. A boy who excelled in class because he felt like he couldn’t fail, whose anxieties about failure eventually manifested into complete apathy when at home. Perhaps not debilitating enough to contemplate death, but still debilitating enough that it made him wonder how things would change it it weren’t for him.

And now that boy, that teenager had grown into a man who had lost _everything._ Crown and country, father, betrothed and lover. It was all mirrored in that blank fear, and _gods above help him,_ Ardyn truly wanted to kill him right now.

Then something flared against the wavering magic behind him. Angry and hissing yet bright enough to dissolve the magic and make Ardyn turn around to see what on earth was going on.

The Amicitia siblings.

Despite all the things Noctis had lost, he had gained a lot as well. The support of the people that his father failed, eventually even the loyalty of a man who had driven himself into the arms of the empire because King Regis had failed him. He had managed to build bridges that Ardyn had so deliberately burnt down. Four of the Hexatheon had been swayed by him and the Oracle’s pleas for help.

The daughter of House Amicitia was the one who had tossed that flask at his wall of darkness. Fire still ate away at a wisp – if he had used proper Daemonic magic, then something as piddly as that flask would have done nothing. But he decided to not let them know about that, because while she flung her weapon forwards and warped after it, her brother took off into a different direction. Ardyn manifested his scythe just in time to block Iris’ blow while Gladiolus made a dash for Noctis, shield and sword in hand.

“Keep your hands off him,” the girl snarled, a positively furious smile on her lips as she turned him around and bounced backwards into the general direction of her brother and her king.

Ardyn ignored her and the Shield, and instead stared down Noctis. Where the fear had been he only looked confused now.

But those two did not give him a chance to ask what he was clearly dying to know, because once more Iris charged forwards, her weapon all but twirling in her hands. She was perhaps the single most skilled fighter in the dark Lestallum had. The one person who always outdid the expectations, and another sign of the bond between the nations now that darkness had taken their homes. After all it had been the Niffs who had given her the nickname ‘Daemon Hunter Iris’ thanks to her daring actions back then when Ignis had tested his own skills. It was a name that stuck, just as Shield of the King stuck with her brother now that their father was dead.

Whatever this mock fight had been before, it turned rather serious now that these two were in the mix. Ardyn made certain to give the nearby Daemons a command – leave these people be. He didn’t exactly mark them as his prey, but it was amusing to see how bewildered Noctis looked as his Shield and his first Glaive did their jobs of protecting him against enemies.

He had to admit, the two of them were impressive. Whenever a heavy swing would have left Iris vulnerable, her brother moved in with his shield to act as suitable distraction. Whenever he brother was shoved backwards by a blast of magic, she jumped in with a howl.

Hells, this had to be the first time in forever that a human who wasn’t Ignis had managed to scratch his face. Though, all things considered, perhaps it was better that these humans did not see in the dark. He had to admit he would have loved to see their faces when they saw his blood was not red, but for the time being he realised that perhaps it was better to retreat now that they were in the mix.

“Wait, please, Gladio! Iris! Hold on a second, I gotta… I gotta ask him something!”

And all of a sudden their furious energy dispersed. They stopped in their tracks as Noctis shoved his way past them to stand not too far away from Ardyn. Perhaps they hadn’t really paid attention to his weapon before now, but as Ardyn dismissed his scythe, their eyes widened.

Noctis meanwhile stared at him.

“Is what you said the truth?”

He shot the Chosen a crooked smile. “Have I ever lied?”

He hadn’t. He had made certain of that. No matter what, Ardyn had always told the truth in one way or another. The Chosen knew that, of course, and he narrowed his eyes.

Ardyn meanwhile waved a hand through the air.

“Goodness gracious. You people have no humour at all. I wasn’t trying to _hurt_ him, you know? That being said, I have _business_ to attend to. As do you.”

That had to be the worst kind of insult he had ever given someone in a sense. He only turned around with his hand raised in farewell.

He was under no illusion that they would be letting him go. Just for this showcase he called upon something different altogether. Instead of illusions or darkness, he called upon something far, far colder.

Noctis and Iris both let out a surprised scream as they warped straight into the wall that manifested behind Ardyn and plummeted to the ground after their strike was interrupted so rudely.

All he did was wave once more and continued walking.

This time without anyone trying to stop him.

* * *

“You know what, Somnus?”

He sat on the stairs leading up into the Citadel, cross-legged even. In all honesty, he had no idea whether he was talking to the statue of his brother or to the spirit that followed him around thanks to the blessing he had collected after making sure the man carrying it never breathed again.

On his trip back, this time even on foot, he had seen something he hadn’t seen since Gralea. For some reason he had thought that these flying Daemons would never migrate from the mountains surrounding the imperial capital to the royal capital at the other end of the world. But much as the people in the field in Leide, he had seen them fly in, slowly floating in. He had utilised these creatures to hunt the Niff airships down whenever a bunch of them he did not want in Lucis left their shelters and made a desperate attempt to leave for a country that would accept them despite everything. Ravus, Aranea and that little noble from Muspell had made rather certain that the Niffs who were in hiding knew that they were welcome at Lestallum. But these flying Daemons, rare as they were, were perfect for hunting down airships.

Seeing an entire group of them migrate to Insomnia without him giving the order to do so was both bewildering but also made him truly feel like the Accursed, come to wipe all life on Eos out to return the planet to ghastly silence and darkness, as the prophecies liked to paint him. It would also make for an interesting challenge for people; Niflheim had not attempted to catch these creatures if they got out. Sure, they were bred in the labs but usually Ardyn had made certain that they got out. Flying creatures of that size rarely swooped down upon prey on the ground, and they made for an interesting challenge for airship pilots worth their salt.

Having them circle over the fallen capital looked rather fitting, considering how it had fallen and now housed the last challenge for the Chosen to overcome.

“I hate you.”

He threw his head back to let out a laugh. For the first time in several hundred years he felt like this was a genuine emotion rather than the desire for petty revenge mixed with betrayal. He’d never considered that hatred could feel that fantastic.

“I hate your descendants, each and every single one of them.”

He folded his hands and closed his eyes. Somewhere over his head he heard the flapping of wings. That was why he quite enjoyed setting these things free while Ignis remained unconscious. Unfortunately Ravus was one of these extremely talented airship pilots, and the three of these flying creatures met their end before they could even remotely target their supposed next prey.

“It’s just so _unfortunate_ that the Chosen is someone with morals. Someone who could see past a monster and still extend a helping hand. You do know I loathe the extra work. And breaking him was not easy. And _still_ he refuses to do it properly. Somnus. Tell me.”

The silence that his brother punished him with was _hilarious._ For just a moment he felt like back then it was he himself who gave his brother the silent treatment whenever he didn’t want to answer something. But that moment, like most vague memories, passed him by so quickly that he did not have time to think about it at all. Much like the Ravatoghan priest, or those vague spectres that might have been his companions, even the person Gilgamesh rather than the tragedy that became the last survivor of the Village of Lix, all those things he forgot again. Did not care about again.

“What else do I have to do to break him properly?”

The answer was simple. The answer was the fool grovelling at his feet usually when he wasn’t clearly imagining himself tearing Ardyn to tiny ribbons and scattering them to the four winds. The answer was a simple Ignis Scientia.

But try as he might, he somehow felt like that shock would be _cheap._ Noctis was expecting something of the sort perhaps, considering he still insisted on Ignis being controlled somehow. Being controlled meant he would not be able to fight back once Ardyn dragged him out into the open to make Noctis suffer more. Perhaps the loss of humanity was more shocking than killing Ignis would ever be.

Fortunately however, it gave him an idea.

A personal blow against the gods that had refused him.

Ardyn slowly got up and almost bounced off the stairs with an unusual spring in his step. He passed the statues, left the invisible line that kept the Daemons out of the Citadel. Waved one of these flying creatures down. Normally they did not pluck prey off the ground, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t do it if necessary.

The Accursed was going to pay another visit to the Infernian. The third time was the charm, after all.


	34. Can you feel the eyes of the crowd?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey did you know my next project is gonna be less soul-crushing. once it leaves the baby plotting phase and goes into hot production phase.  
> kinda hope i can post the first chapter of that along with the last chapter of this bad boy (slaps document with over a million characters, laptop freezes)

There were significantly less pleasant people to be around than one Prompto Argentum. Ignis had grown up around the court of Lucis, always been told to be perfectly polite or else his or his family’s reputation would suffer under it. And once the reputation was ruined, no matter how much Prince Noctis insisted on it, it would be his position on the chopping block. Even if they continued being friends, someone who could not appease the court was not someone worthy of being the advisor.

Quite a few people perceived Ignis as cold – because he _was_ cold. He needed to be, or else his position would suffer. And even long before he came to terms that Noctis meant more to him than the rest of the world, he could not bear to part with the prince. Not after all he had seen happen to the same friend who consistently got them into trouble.

Prompto on the other hand had no idea about the court and how it actually operated, because Noctis had not a full grasp on it either. He didn’t judge people based on conduct, a wonderful thing that only commoners could afford. Even Cor, son of commoners, had lost that touch over the years as he went from an impressive child soldier with no time for politeness to the Marshal of the Crownsguard who, while stern, was a perfect role model. Prompto meanwhile had not lost that touch yet; how should he have? He was not an official member of the Crownsguard when he approached Noctis in high school; his refreshing friendliness had drawn Noctis in like a flame drew in moths.

He held a nervous politeness around Ignis in the few encounters they had before Noctis finally decided to introduce them to one another formally. Ignis, praised as paragon of dutiful politeness despite his sharp tongue and devilish intelligence – and Prompto, the commoner who had not once in his life had to set foot into a room of people fully ready to tear someone apart verbally over politics. But despite all, Ignis and Prompto got along somewhat at least. It did not explode every so often like with Gladio, but it was rather clear that this wasn’t a complete disaster match either. The bubbly energy counteracted Noctis’ brooding nature and Ignis cold exterior.

All in all, it wasn’t surprising that Prompto had managed to befriend someone who had tried to kill them. For even a moment Ignis wanted to crack a smile at how Prompto’s very obvious crush had worked out, too – they had been friends, and Ignis had spent hours listening to Prompto talk about Cindy.

Prompto fiddled with his gun.

Their weaponry was clearly made for smashing through effectively everything they came into contact with. Not exactly something meant to knock someone out and drag them back. The sharpshooter at least seemed to be realising the same thing right now as he twirled his gun. One wrong shot and Ignis would be dead on the ground. Same went for the gunblade that Loqi carried.

And Cindy’s weapon looked too heavy to not do severe damage, if it wouldn’t outright kill him with through blunt trauma if she hit anything vital or his head. Ignis definitely did not want to die of ruptured organs because the Miss Aurum could not aim her swings properly.

It was also rather clear that there was no talking himself out of this situation. If someone knew what Noctis thought, then it was Prompto. The two of them were, as Gladio had put it once, thicker than a pair of thieves. Mutual understanding and care had gotten them rather far; a friendship that even impressed the king and the Marshal enough to allow Prompto along on the journey despite his inexperience in combat. And if Prompto correctly assumed or even knew that Noctis would want to talk with Ignis, then… there was only one way out.

Two ways.

One, running – that already was foolish enough if he just took the fact that Prompto was a hobby runner into consideration, the fact there were two other people completely notwithstanding.

Two, fighting his way out – also foolish, since it was three against one.

If Ignis thought this through rationally, he would have put the Trident of the Oracle down and surrendered. But he decided to ignore the fact he was likely going to lose. There was another possibility, one he hadn’t considered since he’d been unable to do anything about Cor and _killed_ Ravus with his own hands.

He could maul them.

Leave them here to die after the fact. He _could._ It would send enough of a message to Lestallum at long last, one that Ravus’ death at the hands of Ignis Scientia should have sent long ago. The thought alone was bad enough. He couldn’t do that to Noctis. No, scratch that. He couldn’t do that to his former friend Prompto.

But the voice in his head was less rational. It wanted him to fight his way out of this situation with an almost desperate desire to _live_ rather than be sentenced to death for treason. It told him to cleave a way through these three idiots standing in his way and come crawling back where he belonged. Back to Insomnia, back to… who, exactly? Not his lord, not his king. Ignis hated Ardyn, but the sheer desire to go back was overwhelming.

He gagged as he took a step backwards, barely managing to avoid a swing of Cindy’s weapon.

There was only one reason why he would want to go back. The same reason why so many Daemons circled the Citadel, why his own mother had wound up close to Insomnia. The reason why Niflheim had not had that many issues with even breeding Daemons until Ardyn deliberately left the country on several accounts. The Accursed gave the commands. A Daemon had to follow these. Even someone who was definitely still a human but thinking about the most efficient ways to get this situation under control and spill as much blood as possible.

That certainly snapped his attention back to reality.

If nothing else, those three were a good team. There was no immediately obvious weakness he could exploit to distract them for a moment, just about enough time to weasel himself out of here. There were of course Daemons, but none were nearby and he did not want a repeat of what had happened with Iris.

Prompto was the fastest of that group, though he usually pointed his gun in directions Ignis could have dodged into. If he had the guts to shoot then he could have easily made Ignis fall over – a clean shot through the leg. But something seemed to make him hesitate.

Surprisingly enough Cindy wasn’t the slowest despite her almost impressively sized weapon. She lacked the relative ease people who were used to their heavy weapons spun them with, but as a woman who spent her entire life scared of the dark and repairing cars, this was certainly impressive.

The Niff was the slowest, and Ignis started to realise some things. He had taken the same position Gladio had had in their group. A protector rather than a straight attacker.

Loqi parried the blow Ignis directed at him with relative ease. He didn’t even look fazed the slightest.

They didn’t have a weakness when bunched together like this.

Ignis turned around and got some distance between them; just enough to whirl around and direct a flurry of fireballs into their direction. Even though he was exhausted the magic answered him nearly immediately, hissing in the dark as it was flung at them. Loqi unfortunately blocked any that would have hit Cindy, and Ignis pulled.

Before the ones that had missed could turn around like a boomerang, Prompto shot them out of the air.

He let out a frustrated hiss as they closed in again.

There was still that infuriating part of him that told him to give up and go with them. Without a fight. The other part of him was screaming at him to tear them into shreds once he figured out a weakness. Those two voices sounded an awful lot like King Regis and Ardyn, both screaming at him at once. Was that what the Scourge did to one, mentally? His mother had sounded positively deranged, had likely acted on some devious voice telling her to go look for him before it was too late. And now he was in the same situation.

It hadn’t really struck him until now, but his time was running out. Slowly. Steadily. A constant trickle, something that he couldn’t stop from happening at this point.

“C’mon, Ignis. Drop th’facade ‘n come with us,” Cindy said slowly, her weapon still raised. “We don’t havta fight like this. Just come with us.”

He blinked.

This was another attempt to break through Ardyn’s control. Prompto especially would believe what Noctis so desperately clung to; and Cindy in turn would believe it as well. Ignis himself only snorted.

“Still you people would extend a hand to me.”

Prompto, Loqi and Cindy stood shoulder by shoulder now as Ignis continued backing away. While the two Lucians looked very determined to bring him home with them, the Niff looked anything but happy about this situation. There was a strange glint in his eyes that Ignis saw in the dark, a strangely stiff movement as they moved forward as wall.

That was the weak link. Finally he understood.

“That is precisely what killed High Commander Nox Fleuret.” Score. The Niff flinched. “That is what nearly killed Iris and Gladiolus. Have you ever considered that Chancellor Izunia is anything but an active person?”

A small tremble went through Loqi, something that his two friends didn’t notice. He of all people should know Ardyn better than the other two; and Ignis had effectively no idea about Ardyn the politician. He was used to the Accursed, the man who so unrepentantly visited all those horrors upon the world because he had been wronged in the past. There was no way to redeem him, and he didn’t want redemption. At least not in life. Loqi on the other hand knew the man as he acted in Niflheim, around the army. The man whose influenced the country and the war in a rather substantial way. The technology that allowed them to deactivate the powers of the Crystal for a short burst of time, the technology that destroyed their country in the long run but turned them into the single most powerful military might on Eos.

He opened his arms. Looked at the three of them and stopped backing away; at least they stopped moving too. Perhaps in fear that he was going to pull something weird, at least judging from how Prompto, the one with the sharpest sight in their little party of three, threw a look around to check for Daemons or something of the sort.

“Would he _really_ go through all this trouble just to control a single person?”

Cindy and Prompto both opened their mouths, likely to say that of course Ardyn would. But it was Loqi who instead said, slowly and steadily: “No, he wouldn’t.”

The two Lucians turned to look at their friend. All Ignis did was let out a dry laugh.

“And pray tell, why aren’t you telling that to the others?”

“Would they believe me? Or Aranea, for that matter?” A sigh. “You managed to sway the High Commander, after all. To be honest, we believed it too. Because he did. But he’s… dead. Dead, and the body properly disposed of. And all of a sudden the truth was back, glaring us in the eyes. Chancellor Izunia would not go to these lengths. Never. Not once. Which can only mean… you. You’re acting on your own.”

Loqi even went as far as pointing at Ignis. Perhaps in an attempt to distract from how he shook in anger. His face was a perfectly empty mask, however; a soldier of the Niflheim army was trained to be expressionless and merciless when it came down to it, after all. Any and all breakdowns behind closed doors happened in such silence that the Lucian side had to wonder if they were even fighting humans long before the humans were slowly but steadily replaced with Magitek infantry.

“I can’t just… go and tell the king who accepted me and my people without executing any of us for our country’s war crimes that he’s being delusional. Can’t tell my friends that they’re wrong. So I didn’t say anything. But answer me this. Are you actually that much of an asshole, or did the chancellor do something to awaken that side of you?”

Prompto looked positively mortified when Loqi took a step forward and raised his weapon, his finger on the trigger. Cindy, too, had her free hand on her mouth.

“Gee, I wonder.” Just a step away was all he needed. “I need not answer the questions of one Brigadier Officer Loqi Tummelt of the Muspell region in Niflheim.”

A moment of silence. Loqi was still just a step away from the other two.

Prompto shook his head.

“Controlled or not, we’re taking you--”

Ignis lunged forward. Swatted Loqi’s weapon out of the way and grabbed the Niff by the collar. Dragged him away before any of them had a chance to react. Held him in a chokehold.

To Loqi’s credit, he immediately started struggling. But Ignis was so exhausted at this point, he no longer felt pain. No, it likely was the Scourge dulling his senses further and further to the point of him not feeling the Niff flailing against him.

“Now then. Those seem more even grounds to have a civil discussion on.”

That choked out insult he chose to ignore and instead applied more force. That at least made the Niff stop for a moment.

“Ignis, what the fuck!”

“I’ll let him go if you let me go.”

“Never!”

Prompto had moved in front of Cindy. The mechanic herself looked positively terrified, both hands on her mouth as her eyes darted from Prompto to Ignis. She was the one who wasn’t technically meant for a battlefield; she was by the definition a hunter rather than a Crownsguard or infantry commander. His former friend, on the other hand, looked confused. Terrified even.

Years, and Prompto hadn’t changed.

A message that killing Ravus should have sent. For a moment he imagined himself letting Loqi go and going to Lestallum with them. Returning the ring to Noctis, confessing that he had done all this because the Chosen was going to die at the end of this and he had so desperately wanted to see if there was a way to undo the Accursed without sacrificing the Chosen. But that pipe dream was crushed immediately by the whisper that told him what was needed to undo the Accursed without a sacrifice as the gods demanded.

Right now he needed to go back and figure out something. He could always try asking the Mystic – yes, he could ask the Mystic. Back home.

In Insomnia.

But in order to do that he needed to escape from Prompto.

His old friend raised his gun, tried to point it at Ignis’ legs at long last. But with Loqi as feebly struggling, half-choked human shield, there was no way of taking down Ignis without seriously injuring or even killing Loqi. The one thing that Prompto could never stand was seeing his friends and comrades injured because of his own actions or the lack thereof. Thus Ignis knew as long as he kept that human shield he could avoid getting shot.

An ominous sound that sounded like several wings beating in unison sounded, and all four of them looked up. Ignis had seen these things before when he had left Gralea together with Ardyn, had paid them no mind whatsoever. He’d figured they were creatures that lived in the region rather than anything else, but seeing them now he realised they were Daemons. Carefully he extended a command to one to lower itself and start circling somewhere a little ways off. That at least made his escape easier in the long run.

Now all he needed was a way out. Prompto was too fas to outrun. Cindy he could outrun, especially if he shocked her somehow.

Which brought him back to arguing with himself internally. He could easily just maul all three of them and leave them for dead. That in turn would ensure his escape, and ensure that Noctis had a complete breakdown if all three of them died.

This time there was really only one route left for him to take, and it all came down to the Niff feebly struggling against his chokehold and to making certain that Prompto wouldn’t run after him.

He missed Cindy dropping her weapon and taking a step forwards behind Prompto. There was a pleading expression on her face, the worry and fear easy to see, but right now she was begging.

“Ignis! We’re gonna let’cha go, promise but… let Loqi breathe, I’m beggin’ ya!”

“Cindy,” Prompto began, but stopped before he finished whatever he was going to say.

The Niff jerked a little.

Ignis narrowed his eyes. He had the man pinned to himself, the soldier’s arms pinned together in one hand and the other arm across his neck. He hadn’t even meant to apply that much force until now. He eased off a little, and heard the man gasp. That seemed to relax Cindy, at the very least – and it told him exactly what he had to do.

He already had enough faceless people haunting his nightmares together with those he had directly or indirectly killed with his actions.

For a moment he saw himself stand on top of a garrison watchtower together with Noctis, Gladiolus and Prompto a few years ago. Heard himself say that no matter what happened, that bones would always bend easily. It was all part of his training; part of him being made into what he thought was the world’s best advisor rather than the perfect little replacement prince, replacement king. He had been taught how to torture, how to withstand torture – and how to efficiently kill someone without weapons.

For a moment time stood still as he considered the next course of action.

Snapping a neck really was easier than it should have been. Cindy let out a screech as Ignis dropped Loqi and rushed forward, once more drawing the Trident of the Oracle. Prompto shoved her backwards just in time for him to wind up getting his side torn open by the weapon.

“Grh…!”

“Prompto!”

Ignis grabbed his former friend by the collar and lifted him into the air a little. For a moment they looked at each other, then Ignis slammed him into the ground. Drove his foot against the open wound and, once again, drove the trident into an opponent’s leg. It was an eerie echo of what Ardyn had done to Cor, but unlike the Accursed back then, Ignis stopped when he drove the weapon into Prompto’s left leg. He considered plunging it into his shoulder for a moment but decided against it; those two injuries meant enough of a blood loss unless Cindy knew what she was doing. He yanked the trident out as Prompto did his best to not start screaming – unknowingly mirroring Cor back then – and turned to look at Cindy.

“Now then. If you hurry he’s going to live. Surely you know first aid.”

With that he turned around and ran off. Past the discarded body of the Niflheim officer, past what felt like the final boundary to his sanity. Bounced off a rock and onto the back of the Daemon he told to circle nearby.

Ignis didn’t turn around to check if Cindy did as he suggested.

* * *

He arrived in Insomnia and hopped off the creature’s back. He landed on a skyscraper that was still intact, wobbled a little after sitting that long.

For a moment he considered having his impending breakdown right there, but he decided against it. Instead he opened the door on the roof to slowly but steadily descend. This building he vaguely recalled as the headquarters of one of Insomnia’s finest newspapers, a paper he liked reading back when they had lived in this city, back when the war had been behind the Wall and the biggest worry they had had was King Regis’ declining health. Those people had dedicated their lives to their profession, to the point that they had even lost a rather famous employee to the war outside the Wall when he left to see how the people closer to the fighting felt about it. The man died because he protected a young mother, and subsequently an entire media outrage had started about this. Noctis had commented on it exactly once, in private.

Back in the garden that was now an empty, dead husk.

Had said that if he could do _anything_ from here he would have done it, would have left the city like his father did in his youth and the Glaives did regularly for the larger-scale fights. But somehow he felt like he was being kept in a gilded cage.

Ignis now knew that he had been deliberately kept in what he perceived as cage. Because Noctis would have to die regardless, but not on the battlefield as a hero of the war but instead as the man who single-handedly saved the planet because the gods needed a blood sacrifice.

Something that Ignis wanted to prevent but… at this point there was absolutely no way to excuse his actions. Not that he wanted to excuse them in the first place – as long as it had been his inaction during the time Cor had been killed. But everything thereafter was proving that something with his head went extremely wrong, had likely made him more susceptible to contracting the Scourge in the first place. Somewhere between the time he had been ordered to take care of the Niffs that landed at the Vesperpool and deciding to kill them all and earlier he had completely lost his value of human life. The only thing that mattered was… Noctis.

That was a sort of obsession he had never wanted to fall into. Rationally speaking, it was rather clear that right now the Scourge was definitely screwing with his head, just as it screwed with Ardyn’s, as it had screwed with his mother’s and gods only know how many other victims. Irrationally thinking, however, he felt… nothing. Not a shred of regret.

Not that Loqi Tummelt would have felt any regret if he had killed them at the Norduscaen Blockade, how he wouldn’t have felt any had they killed Ignis instead of taken him to Lestallum alive. But there was something he wasn’t quite comfortable with as he thought about this situation. Something that told him that he had truly become the Sage’s apprentice at some point, that he was starting to be exactly like Ardyn had been.

He jumped to his feet.

His thoughts raced as he all but stumbled down the rest of the office, burst out through the front door and breathed in the cold, stagnant air of the eternal night rather than the dusty air of an office that had been abandoned for so long that he wasn’t entirely certain if he remembered anything else about the newspaper other than the reporter incident.

Ignis Scientia made a mad dash for the Citadel as he pulled the Ring of the Lucii from his pockets and held it to his chest.

* * *

Once again, the statue of the Mystic that had been part of the Old Wall seemed to be missing a chunk. He should have expected that much, but seeing the leg crumbled and the statue kind of awkwardly leaning to one side was bewildering. Whatever Ardyn was planning with the three of them, it was definitely not something Ignis wanted to find out. He’d already had a taste of it what felt like an eternity ago, and he didn’t want to imagine what it would be like once he fully got what he wanted to do.

He had stopped in front of it, the Ring of the Lucii still in his hands. He was fully aware that he was trembling at this point, his breath coming in short gasps rather than anything normal.

Gods, he felt like his body was on fire. It was the fever all over again, but instead of making him unaware of his surroundings it made all his senses aware of everything around him. Showed him the blood on his hands. The blood on his clothes, both literally – he had stabbed Prompto, killed Ravus and Loqi – and metaphorically – he had stood by and let Cor die, had made these Daemons attack the almost helpless Niffs at the Vesperpool, had he and Ravus but been faster perhaps Lunafreya could have lived as well.

For a long moment he continued looking at it, then opened his mouth.

How exactly would one address a long dead king? Would that man who had been the Accursed’s brother even react to the pitiful heap that ancient spirits and the Hexatheon now called his brother’s apprentice? He had absolutely no way of knowing if Somnus Lucis Caelum would react, wasn’t entirely sure how to even start that conversation.

“ _He won’t answer you, Ignis.”_

That was a voice he hadn’t heard in a while. Rather than Lunafreya’s voice it was King Regis this time.

“ _The only way to speak to him would be to put on the Ring of the Lucii, since the sigil… remains in the Accursed’s hands.”_

For a second the impulse flared up in his mind. He wanted to put on that ring and scream at the Lucii, at King Regis. Wanted to tell them how unfair this was, no matter how they looked at it. A single life for the planet was perhaps not much of a sacrifice to any of them except for King Regis, but if that was what the world needed then Ignis wanted the world to burn rather than having to lose Noctis in this way. How it was all so heartbreakingly unfair and he understood why the Accursed acted out of spite if that was how they treated the people who were supposed to save the world.

Perhaps admitting that he felt like he _understood_ by this point was the worst thing about this whole undertaking. He had set out intending to backstab the man as soon as he figured out how to kill him properly. But so far he had learned of one way that was no longer accessible to him. And even though he would still kill Ardyn without hesitation – just as Ardyn would kill him in return without even a second of hesitation – he had learned why the man thought and acted like this, vague though it was. He understood the intense desire to act out of spite; he was doing it as well by now.

The difference was that Ardyn acted just as the prophecy wanted from him, his spite included. Ignis was still the wildcard that they hadn’t had on the radar.

If it hadn’t been for Lunafreya’s executive meddling from beyond the veil between life and death, he would have never snatched the Ring of the Lucii and gone with Ardyn. Hells, if he could redo that entire encounter he would likely tell Ardyn that his allegiance belonged with the true king alone. Ardyn would kill him for that remark, there was no doubt about it. But it would have significantly reduced the agony that every single party except for the Accursed went through. Of course Noctis would have been agonised, but those kinds of wounds healed with time. If only he had done that instead of this.

He dropped the Ring of the Lucii as he started at his hands. The statue of the Mystic remained as silent as before, and King Regis was just as silent as that, and all Ignis heard was his own infuriating heartbeat. He was alive.

Unfortunately.

He shook his head and quickly retrieved the Ring of the Lucii before looking around. The Citadel was empty, and there was no trace of the Accursed to be seen anywhere. The fact that the blood moon above had vanished a while ago meant that he was no longer in stasis, but the fact that he was gone right now told him that Ardyn had left the city at some point. Whether he had returned already or not, Ignis couldn’t exactly tell as he heard the flapping of wings above his head.

Those Daemons from Niflheim would not be coughing up an answer for him – they were mute. It made him wonder if these were created in the labs in the country or if they were a rare but natural permutation of someone turning into a Daemon. Would he be joining these things up in the skies at some point?

Then again, all things considered he would likely just be turning into a goblin. Stronger than the average one, yes, but still a goblin. He deserved nothing more than that. Not that he particularly wanted to turn into a Daemon, but dying before he turned was unlikely – and even then, a body needed to be burned or otherwise it would reanimate.

He chose to sit down at that moment, an odd tremble going through his feverishly hot body. For a few hours, Ignis Scientia sat in front of the Citadel, in front of the statue of the Mystic, and stared at his own hands. A murderer how did not feel a single shred of guilt over his latest victim; the one he had to blame for his plans to be going this wrong.

Ignis almost wanted to beg the gods to smite him this time.

But they didn’t answer when he called for them.

Apprentice to the Accursed, indeed.


	35. HISTORY

Back before Solheim fell, people considered fire the universal sign of life. Fire made many things possible, from general warmth to cooking, to lighting up the darkest places. It was a small wonder that the people worshipped Ifrit after he ensured that fire would never betray these people. He did love them, after all.

Water on the other hand was treacherous. It was the one thing humans needed to survive, but water itself was deep and dark. A mystery none could figure out, because the depths were protected by a most vengeful goddess; Leviathan hated humans and the depths remained the one goddess to never stray from her path. In the depths she and her creatures remained as long as the humans minded their own business.

Only when water was stilled to the point of freezing over did humans trust it. But ice perhaps was the most treacherous element of them all. The prettiest, but the most dangerous to stay around. Fire had its dangers clearly defined by the Infernian, the depths were clearly dangerous as well, but the cold always wound up changing from person to person. It seemed only right that the avatar of ice was widely regarded an icon of death just as much as the water she and Leviathan controlled in two different states. The rumbling thunder of Ramuh brought both fire and water; for rain was necessary but cause a lot of death. A delicate balance that the Fulgurian had struck with mankind. But Shiva presented herself as the chill winds of death that called in people with their bewitching beauty, that for freshly fallen snow. There was an allure to death that drew forth the people of Solheim as the Infernian helped them, but her stance did not change.

Did not change until the Infernian himself approached her to show that humans were more than mortal drivel.

Some people assumed that the pilgrimage was based on what the Infernian showed her across the countries that made up Solheim. A high place, possibly man-made, that let them watch the country without having to spend energy to float that high up. The silence of mortal death, the dignity with which they treated their dead. The warmth of fire, a shared living space of some sort, a volcano perhaps, something that told the story of the planet ever changing. Then finally the depths that mortals could reach without treading into death’s domain, caverns that went deep down and did not let the light in. This was where fire and ice both excelled; for ice thrived in the deep and fire could light the dark.

In order to learn a magic that could bend reality, one had to repeat these steps that many others had taken to honour the Infernian and the Glacian of ancient times. Not that a single living person remembered that – including the Accursed.

It was so very ironic that the humans rose against the gods that watched over them, the Infernian especially. The fall of Solheim was one of hubris, caused by people who had thought themselves more powerful than the gods. The hands of fate ticked towards certain doom, and instead of trying to fight it they let it happen as it happened. The inevitable fight between the Astrals, the destruction of civilisation at the height of the Astral War, and eventually the fall of Ifrit at the hands of Bahamut.

The pages of history were written by those who survived, clearly fabricating bits and pieces of it, but the scars on the planet remained. Deep gorges and cliffs where nothing but land had been before, an entire region shattered because one Astral had given up their life to catch the meteor sent by another.

The Astrals regenerated, of course. Hidden away somewhere they licked their wounds, tried to recover their physical forms. Only one was not regenerating as quickly as the others, for the sign of life had become the sign of hatred, of betrayal. They say it was Shiva who laid him to rest at Ravatogh after Bahamut all but fell apart in a shower of blades. After returning from her duty the Glacian vanished to join her fellow Astrals in rest, and never did they speak again until a pair had their revelations, until the Cosmogony was penned.

Lies, of course. Before the Mystic and the first Oracle was the Sage, the one who retraced the steps of that ancient travel that the Infernian took the Glacian on. The one who bested the training grounds of antiquity and emerged as the Sage, the one who continued travelling the country and healed the masses. But power came at a price, one that he could not have known. It was too late by the time he realised what was flaring up within him, by the time he could have admitted what was happening he was already changed irrevocably. The Sage became the Source, and the Source was then banished as the Accursed. The creature that wore the skin of the Sage, a cheap copy of a once beloved healer and brother.

And though they left no lasting visible scars on the earth, the fights that emerged from this situation left their signs on the pages of history as well. The cleft in the earth that Bahamut’s final strike against the Infernian had left became home to a single generation of banished warriors that pledged their allegiance to the man who had saved them rather than the man the gods had chosen. They made the caves their home, their battleground – and then they were forgotten, kept bound to this earth as restless spirits for as long as the Crystal’s energies continued flowing. The Sage became the Accursed, went from scathing but harmless to bitter and resentful. And the only ones that history remembered were the ones who were on the side of the Mystic.

The Cosmogony only needed the Accursed and the King of Light – what was the point in remembering a man who healed the masses but failed to heal the heart of the planet?

It had taken Ardyn a while to realise some things. He had spent the better part of history as a shadow, something that occasionally struck out of spite as it formulated its master plan of how to ensure that the Sage got what he deemed rightful revenge. Long before the countries agreed on a shared universal calendar instead of their own ones he had kept track of things with his own calendar. Long before he realised Niflheim was the nation to manipulate for his own gain he had watched the countries fight between themselves, watched the once small region of Lucis conquer the entire continent it was named after. His home became a conqueror of nations, uniting everything under the same front – and then faced losses at the hands of Niflheim once he intervened. Niflheim won the war, but its control did not span the entire planet as Solheim once did; Accordo remained free to do as it pleased, the seeds of rebellion were blooming as soon as Insomnia fell all across the country of Lucis. And then the gods awoke, one by one.

First the Glacian, who rose in anger and despair, who mourned the death of a woman and the fall of a country – who fell in a shower of ice crystals, whose body was left in the gorge she died in and whose death brought the cold to Niflheim.

Second the Archaean, whose waking shook the earth underneath the feet of the Oracle and the Chosen, whose challenge was one the Chosen could only answer because the Accursed guided him to the meteor.

Then the Fulgurian, whose thunder rolled across the skies, whose rain nearly drowned the region of Duscae until the Chosen arrived at the final remnant of a temple dedicated to the god.

The waking of the Hydraean marked the destruction of a city, marked the death of the Oracle, marked the betrayal of the advisor and a change in the way destiny unfolded – her wrath destroyed and destroyed until nothing was left at that point.

Then the Infernian, who returned to slumber near immediately, but not after throwing a wrench in the plans of the Accursed.

The ground underneath him shook a little, some rocks rolling down the Rock of Ravatogh. Their way down echoed in the silence, loud and intrusive. Once upon a time there were some creatures that had lived here, wyverns that did not exist in any other part of the country, the mighty Zus that were extinct by now, a handful pesky insects that thrived on this altitude and in the heat. But otherwise this volcano was a silent testament to death, to the warmth that pulsed through every body corrupted by the Scourge brought forth by the very god that had been laid to rest here. Permanent fevers were a sign of the Scourge; those warm to the touch for longer than a week were those fated to fall victim to a sickness that nothing could purge.

Once upon a time he could do it. Healing magic was cold, but only something that was colder than a clear ice crystal could chase the Scourge out of a body. People described the magic of the Oracle as warm when they saw it, because light was perceived as warm. But there was nothing warm about it; it was the cold harshness of winter that chased the warmth of summer away – why should the coldness of the gods not be the most effective way to chase away the warmth of divine betrayal?

But nowadays that particular brand of iciness did not answer him any longer. No combination of words, no single twist of the power flow could make the Accursed the Sage once more, the bringer of dark would not be the healer of sickness ever again. No matter how cold the hands were, the healer’s smile always reassured people. That was something the Oracles had done until the last of their line died with that infuriatingly hollow smile on her face. She could have healed herself had she but focused on herself more than Noctis, the Chosen who would have lived regardless of her intervention. Not even Leviathan, goddess of the deep, dark seas, would have killed the Chosen. She would have not given him the blessing he needed to purge the dark and would have destroyed the city entirely, yes, but she would not have killed that one particular pesky mortal – that one pesky mortal that she would have given her blessing to once Bahamut awoke and forced her to.

But the Draconian remained asleep, likely waiting for the moment that the Accursed also waited for. The Ring of the Lucii in the Chosen King’s hands, and the Crystal in his reach.

He slammed his foot down. The rock underneath cracked a little, some more rocks went tumbling down the mountain, the volcano. Ever since the eruption is was unbearably hot here, but Ardyn felt no pain. He did not feel the heat; the only thing he felt was that sickly pulse of warmth that went through his body with every feeble attempt of his long ravaged body to _recover._

But there would be no recovery for the Accursed. The Sage might have been granted that, but the Accursed did neither deserve nor demand recovery; did not desire redemption in life.

He wanted this game to be over. Wanted for the coldness of the Crystal to finally pierce that veil of fire that surrounded him and kept him shackled to life as a creature that was neither man nor monster.

Eventually he reached the top. Stared once more into that bleak abyss of darkness and fire, felt the pulse of the earth beneath him.

That was something divine, something sacred, no matter how many times he had betrayed the Hexatheon after the humans betrayed him. Love turned to hatred, health to sickness, light to darkness, day to night. But hatred could come around to become love again, just as the sick grew healthy again either in life or in death, and dark and night always gave way to light and day. It was a cycle, a cycle that the Scourge disrupted. Ifrit’s final gift to humanity after fire and civilisation was a sickness that made civilisation crumble and fire, ever the sign of life, the only means to prevent the dead from rising as grotesque creatures of undeath.

The Accursed roused a fire on top of the Rock of Ravatogh. For a moment he remembered his brother telling him not to play with fire, because fire was violent and treacherous, even if it was just an illusion conjured up by whatever power he had gained in the Pitioss Ruins. For a moment he remembered the campfires in the wild, upon sacred grounds that the gods had given travellers, beside a handful people, with him sitting back to back with the mercenary of Lix Village that people only called… what was his name again? He had forgotten.

And thus he tossed a Daemon into the flames, made the fire rise higher until finally the infernal Infernian answered his call – for the third time.

Three had chosen to look human, three had chosen to remain in their incomprehensible forms. The Infernian was the nurturer of mankind, and where he could not help the Fulgurian did – and the Glacian chose to follow his steps once he thawed her frozen heart. The Draconian remained as silent watcher of mankind, the Archaean looked more like the ancient tribe of giants that had died out by the time Solheim had risen, and the Hydraean remained a creature of the deep, intimidating and beautiful at once. It was rather clear that the depictions of this particular member of the Hexatheon were not exaggerated.

Ifrit was a sight to behold. Though called the bane of humanity nowadays, it was rather clear that this god in particular was closer to them than they could ever comprehend. Fire licked across the ground around the Accursed, whisked past his face and up into the skies. Embers danced with the sickly flakes that were clumps of bacteria or whatever it was that spread the Scourge in the end – Ardyn had forgotten at this point and did not care any longer. It was a bizarre showcase of the god of fire’s intimidating powers and the Accursed’s darkness that had grown in the shadow of that god.

But much like Solheim had eventually turned against the deity they revelled most, it was the Accursed’s time to raise his hand against the one he had to thank for the sickness that had ruined his life and trapped him in a perpetual state of undeath. Whether the Infernian knew that or had any idea why the Accursed was rousing him again, he didn’t tell. Ardyn and Ifrit stood there and silently stared at one another for a long, long time. Eventually, once the embers died down and only darkness remained, Ardyn bowed.

“O Infernian! Long has it been since last you rose to answer the calls of mortals. Four have awoken – why not you, then? The Hexatheon is not complete without you, without you the Chosen cannot win against the darkness that you agreed he would wipe away.”

He was not expecting an answer, truth be told. Ifrit did not need to give one; he was the god who had been betrayed by mankind after naught but generosity – or so history painted him as.

That was another thing about history that both amused an infuriated the Accursed. The victors or the survivors wrote it depending on the situation. Those people falsified the truth in their favour, or to show how truly despicable some actions were. The victor would paint themselves as the sole reason for said victory, be it a war that had an important battle, the outcome of which decided the further decisions in the war that eventually led to victory or death – the survivors would always make the event that caused the war something so abhorrent that future generations agreed the survivors deserved to survive despite the war being righteous. Ardyn had not lived in Solheim, could not say if the wonderfully painted pictures of divinity walking alongside mortals were true or not. Perhaps the Infernian had deserved the mortals rising up against him under a united banner by the time it happened. Perhaps he was as innocent as history painted him as until he unleashed the Scourge as final parting gift. There was no way of telling now, because Ardyn understood that the scorned twisted history in their favour just as the victors did. His memory was failing him, and all he knew was that his revenge was _rightful_ to _him_ , that was all that mattered. He cared little about what wound up being written in the pages of history as long as _something_ was in there. And if it was just that Ardyn Lucis Caelum of the Izunia family was the most spiteful bastard who ever lived, that he was the miscreant, the _monster_ they had to thank for the Chosen’s ultimate sacrifice. Just a line in the history books, that was all he wanted.

Even redemption in death was something he did not care about.

And the longer it took, the more spiteful he became.

“It is about high time you got _off_ your damn volcano and came with me, Ifrit!”

“ _With you?”_

He cracked a lopsided grin at the god of fire.

“With the monster your sickness helped create. The Star’s very heart is beating feebly under the corrupted veins, and soon there will be naught left to save. Can’t you feel it? The chill winds of destiny, picking up again? Something is due for change. It tells you to go take your place in this story. So come with me.”

“ _Pesky mortals, demanding things of divinity as if they have a right to it.”_

The grin widened and Ardyn let go of his human face. The shadows surrounding the Rock of Ravatogh rose, higher and higher until they once more contested the flames that now licked up around the Infernian.

“Flesh is so feeble. So easy to tear into bloody chunks. Yes, it is true that you gods are made of something more than us mortals, that you withstand more. But in the end, this sickness you helped ease into the very lifeblood of the planet will be your undoing. After the Astral War each and every single one of you went to rest. But the poisoned blood continued pumping through the very essence of the planet. By choosing to rest in a wound in the earth, or being laid to rest here… Your freshly rebuilt physical form has one glaring weakness.”

Fire hissed against the waves of darkness that quivered behind Ardyn. The air of foreboding had become an air of sickness, warm and entirely too unreal. He opened his arms with that smile still on his face, and the shadows moved with him. Enveloped the top of the Rock of Ravatogh. Beneath him the earth rumbled, shook and cracked. Any moment now it would rupture, send him plummeting into the earth’s molten core and leave him stuck just outside the Astral Realm in the void of death, with whatever deity watching the gates turning him away because if they let him through the heart of the planet would irrevocably wither away and die. The Source that Ardyn had been prophesied to cleanse had taken hold of his body, had made him become the Accursed, a creature that could not be allowed to die even though like all living beings after a certain amount of time he yearned for death. Humans were not meant to live that long, and his body screeched for the final curtain call, his head was failing him at times because he did not belong in this time.

A shudder went through his body as he bared his teeth with a growl.

The Infernian stared at the shadows that danced around him, choked out the flames that he brought to fight against the dark.

“You’re vulnerable! Vulnerable to the very thing you used to choke out mankind!”

For a moment the Infernian’s expression changed. For a split second his eyes went wide.

“Resting in the earth and letting your body recover filled your veins with parts of it, just as it fills the veins of the earth! Don’t you think it is about high time you rise as the creature that brought the Scourge upon mankind rather than the god of fire allegedly betrayed by humans?”

For a moment it looked like Ifrit was going to say something.

Ardyn clapped his hands together.

Then darkness engulfed all. Like the waves of the deep crashing against the shores, like the hail of blades that followed the Infernian’s fall and told of the Draconian’s victory at the cost of his own power. Like the howl of the blizzards that rose in defiance, like the roar of thunder and the cracking of the earth.

The rumble of Ravatogh fell silent, as if something had choked the hiss of uncontrolled fire out as darkness gave way to a single man standing on top of it.

* * *

Insomnia was silent.

Once more he marvelled at the beauty of a city in ruins. It was bewitching in a strange definition of the word. The stillness and silence in the city that once buzzed and seemingly never slept was perhaps the single most wonderful thing in the world. A place devoid of humans that so needlessly attempted to make their short lives count. The buildings that still stood pierced the darkened heavens, black husks against black skies. Where Gralea had continued shining in the dark until the power went out because the survivors switched them off to conserve power for their underground shelters, Insomnia was simply devoid of energy. Had been that way since the Old Wall rose against the Daemons Niflheim had brought.

It brought an interesting contrast between the countries to light; quite literally to light. Lucis made no effort to rebuild what had been destroyed, left it as a silent mausoleum for the dead. They had not been allowed to rebuild in any case, but there were no protests in the city against this decision from their new government that was seated in Niflheim. Instead they grieved for the dead and the things lost, then started rallying with the intention of rebellion. There was a reason why traffic in and out of the city was slow other than the fact Prince Noctis’ death had been fabricated. There were so many weapon dealers and former members of the Kingsglaive that survived the uprising that night. There were countless people who learned how to handle weapons – even when it became rather clear that Noctis was alive because they never found his body, they still rallied in the underground against their new masters, in an attempt to avenge their king and prince, their future queen and all those who lost their lives in that one fateful night. Lucis was alive, a country perhaps drained of its fighting spirit in the war but not of its fighting spirits for what they thought was rightful and necessary.

Niflheim’s Gralea on the other hand rebuilt whatever Daemons broke near immediately. They soaked the bloody puddles up the next day if a Daemon got into a house and ran rampant within it. Made certain it was all pristine to the outside while the insides rotted away. Entire chunks of the city sectors vanished as they turned into the Daemons that the scientists could not control, but still Gralea stood, shining in the dark and impressive to look at. The people had lost their taste for war, had lost their desire to fight back. They all waited silently until they were either made part of the army to fight on foreign shores, or waited until the vanishing sickness took them away and ended their pathetic existences. This behaviour had popped up as soon as Lucis had fallen; Gralea knew that Prince Noctis and Oracle Lunafreya were alive. But the war was over in their eyes, and the energy that Ardyn and the other politicians had so delicately worked to keep up as their emperor demanded dispersed nearly immediately. Where Lucis would have rebelled, Niflheim had resigned.

It made rather clear why the Crystal had been given to the continent of Lucis rather than the continent of Niflheim; why the Oracles chose to live on the continent of Niflheim rather than Lucis.

Lucians did not need someone to soothe their souls, they needed a catalyst for their energies; just as Niflheim did not need an artefact of hallowed might but rather someone who could ease the suffering of the masses. Even without Ardyn’s intervention it would have gone this way sooner or later. Eventually an emperor or an empress of Niflheim would have succeeded as subduing a king or queen of Lucis, and then the people of both countries would have fallen into that pattern. A victor’s silence and the hollowness of a people who were used to war economics and famines, the loser’s defiance because they were used to war economics and losing their homes.

This silent city perfectly mirrored that defiant urge to battle the hollowness of the night, but as soon as he set foot into the inner parts of the city, he felt something had changed.

The Daemons from Gralea were circling the skyscrapers even now, the one he had taken to the Rock of Ravatogh and back joining them. But something about the energies of this city had changed, and Ardyn wondered why that was the case.

He had been gone for a few days at best, since climbing that mountain took a while, especially after preparing the magic net he had thrown on the Infernian. Then the climb down, and the return to here. Just a few days, and something had changed so strangely that he felt it as he stepped into that street.

That was when he noticed the relatively fresh splatter of blood.

“Ah.”

It wasn’t that fresh, but it was recent enough that it stood rather stark against the colour of the asphalt. Whoever had landed here definitely had been injured. Ardyn turned to look up. A few half-collapsed skyscrapers stood in this corner of the city, just about enough that some sort of fight could have taken place here if someone could close gaps quickly enough. There were a few ways to do that, but Ardyn decided against forming an opinion of what had happened here.

A fight in a dead city. Perhaps the change in energy was that it was truly dead now – perhaps the Glaives had finally made their move and gotten the last civilians stuck in here out. If Ignis had returned from wherever Ardyn had sent him off to, then a clash like that would make sense.

He continued his walk back through the city.

Was this the future that Somnus had wanted for Lucis? Likely not. Vaguely he recalled that if there was one thing they always agreed on, then it was the well-being of the people. Giant cities that could cost a lot of people their lives if they fell were the last thing his brother would have wanted. It seemed almost ironic that this was what the future headed towards regardless, the very kind of settlement that the first king of Lucis hated. Ardyn had liked the bustle of larger settlements, though he did no longer remember why. He likely just enjoyed the noise of living people, a reminder that despite the Scourge waiting in the darkness that there was always more life to be had. The death of a single person did not mean the end of a settlement. Even sickness could not completely wipe them out.

The Daemons were oddly quiet today. It took him a few moments to realise that someone was keeping them away through sheer willpower alone, and turned towards the Citadel. This was the only place they did not go into, after all, but if this truly was Ignis, why was he going through all that trouble? It was a waste of energy.

Above him a lazily circling Daemon turned around. A sudden gust of wind went through the streets, tore at his clothes and would have sent his head flying if he had worn it.

In front of the Citadel was one of Niflheim’s oh so prized Cerberuses. A creature made for relentless hunting and war, not something that would just lay in front of a building like a tame little dog.

How had one of these washed up in the city? They roamed the Niflheim wilderness rather than any place in Lucis. Quickly scanning the area revealed that there were none other than this one – how on good earth had it appeared here?

Another splatter of blood was on the ground near it, and for a split second he thought that this was either the Daemon that had ended the advisor – or was the advisor himself. But a Cerberus was not a natural creation just as the Diamond Weapons were. This was a specifically bred and genetically engineered creature, like so many he had helped create in Gralea’s Zegnautus Keep and the many surrounding laboratories.

There was also no blood on the creature’s claws, no blood near its teeth. This was a Daemon that was… quite literally taking a nap, as if it had been ordered to.

“Fascinating.”

He sauntered past it carefully, pushing open the gates to the Citadel with a careless huff and walked on. If he wanted this to be a proper welcoming party for Noctis, he might have to look into restoring the lights in this place entirely. But there was something enchanting about the desolate darkness, especially if the Chosen would bring a light. Then it would reflect off the gold and silver, off the polished marble.

This would be a perfect place to let the fool fight the Infernian for the final piece of the puzzle once he arose with the Crystal’s true power and Bahamut’s blessing. The inside had just enough space for the Old Wall if ordered to shrink down a little or for Daemons made in their image by using the power of the blessings he had taken from their original holders.

In front of the steps to the Citadel stood Ignis.

“It would seem I have missed a rather significant battle of some sorts.”

The advisor bowed slowly, very slowly. He likely had a few bruised ribs, judging from how awkward it looked.

“You… have not. The only significant thing about this… ah, brawl perhaps, I had with… someone, is that the civilians are gone and were replaced by hunters who intend to stay in the city.”

So they had made their move. Ardyn looked at Ignis again, saw the advisor wince slightly and noticed the dried blood on the man’s face.

It looked like he had fallen from a high place and somehow managed to get away with a bloodied face and some cracked ribs. And a torn side, judging from the worryingly fresh spot of blood on the advisor’s shirt.

“Nevertheless, I ought to patch you up.”

“… Thank you, Your Majesty.”

* * *

“ _Let history return whence it came,”_ whispered the Rogue in the morning.

“ _What has gone wrong shall be corrected soon,”_ muttered the Fierce when the Cerberus moved.

“ _Blessed stars of life and light,”_ began Lunafreya softly in the afternoon, _“let destiny dance in the darkest night.”_

In the evening, Ignis left. He did not say where he went, but Ardyn did not doubt for a second that he could find that errant fool if necessary.

“ _You’ll regret this, brother,”_ was all Somnus, the Founder, the Mystic, said before falling silent just like the rest of them.


	36. The hearts you broke.

Ardyn remained mysteriously absent, but the morning after he returned back to Insomnia, Ignis found a completely different kind of thing stalking through the streets of Insomnia just as he was.

He’d only heard the reports second-hand, and always prayed that no matter what, he would never have to run into one of these creatures. Only the strongest of the Glaive were able to take them on, and even then generally in teams of at least three to five people. There were a few reports that someone with a well-timed and well-aimed warp was able to take one of these down, but the success rate of this was unsurprisingly near zero, whereas the casualty rate was exceedingly high.

The only person repeatedly reported to be able to take down a Cerberus was the now late Nyx Ulric, and even then only when it was distracted by something or someone. His skills had often saved other members of the Glaive who had not been as lucky with taking one of these down as he was.

He should have suspected that something had changed in the air that the Daemons from Niflheim were migrating via air, but seeing a Cerberus by itself was more terrifying than those lazily circling above his head. Had Ardyn dropped it in here? Was this some sort of test? He had no way of telling, and for a moment all he felt was fear. What if the next step was one of these things that had laid waste to Insomnia, the very reason Nyx Ulric had apparently slipped on the Ring of the Lucii to buy Lunafreya safe passage out of the city as he fought General Glauca? If one of these things appeared here, there was absolutely no telling what would happen to Lestallum. A Cerberus could be contained, yes, but Ardyn himself had said that those Diamond Weapons were hard to create and even harder to control – and effectively every researcher who could was dead or had hidden themselves somewhere far, far away from the general Niflheim shelters.

If nothing else, he understood why these creatures were so dangerous after watching it from on high for a while. He had both underestimated and overestimated the sheer size of the thing, somehow. He’d always assumed it were the three heads, but that wasn’t even the gist of it. The fire – somehow most reports failed to mention the fire.

Elementally aligned Daemons without magic were rare, and those few whose fire powers were red and not a sickly green were even rarer; the bombs were just about the only thing that he could think of. There were a few that had weapons, yes, but in the end there were precious few Daemons who used normal-looking fire. Ignis knew that he would not be turning into one of these, he would be joining the countless mage-types eventually.

He leaned against the wall and fought back a gag. All of a sudden he was aware of everything around him, from the Cerberus that now stopped in the street to investigate wherever that pathetic sound had come from, to the fact that something was moving about several streets over. For a moment it felt like he could _see_ all of Insomnia, but the moment was over before it got to his head. With a heave he stood back up straight and stared down into the street, at the Cerberus.

No matter the size, as long as he was in control of himself and not turning into an abomination, he was the second-highest on the food chain in Insomnia. The position he had sought because it gave him the most room to think, the position that had given him effectively nothing by now no matter how much time he spent thinking. There was no solution he managed to come up with, and just as King Regis had said, the Mystic refused to answer him. Therefore Ignis chose to lean down a little and hold eye contact with the Cerberus.

Eventually the Daemon bent under the magic force he applied.

“Go take a nap. Forever, if you have to.”

The Cerberus let out a surprisingly strange-sounding whine and went away. He found it asleep in front of the Citadel not too long afterwards.

* * *

The next day, he started coughing as soon as he woke up. The Ring of the Lucii was still in his pockets – he rarely left it around the room nowadays in fear of Ardyn actually finding it. So far the man seemed not to consider him a likely candidate for carrying the damned thing, which would have been hilarious if it didn’t petrify Ignis in fear.

More than once had he considered slipping it on and giving the Lucii a piece of his mind. He would die for that course of action, and his charred remains would definitely mean the ring would fall into Ardyn’s hands. As much as he wanted to change Noctis’ fate, there was a certain amount of apprehension when it came to letting the sign of Lucian royalty fall into anyone else’s hands. Even though Ardyn could be considered Lucian royalty, and therefore had more rights to it than Ignis himself had.

It slipped from his hands when he started coughing and fell to his knees a moment later. It was a pathetic feeling, coughing and coughing until his lungs felt like they were on fire. Then again, this was a symptom. There was absolutely no denying that it was progressing, and Ardyn’s assumption of ten years had been too generous.

Perhaps it was related to the fact that he was losing heart. Just the tiniest bit of resignation, and it had advanced to this point, the point where he spat blackened blood on the ground and only barely managed to snatch the Ring of the Lucii off the floor and slipped it back into his pockets before his eyes rolled back and he crashed onto the floor, unconscious.

* * *

Something or someone inside the city was moving. It were careful steps, no more than six people if the general feeling in the city could be believed. Curiosity got the better of him in the end – the times where he was the person calling for sense rather than curiosity were long over. In the end, he found what he was looking for after slinking through a bunch of streets and seeing what exactly was upsetting the Daemons in the city that much.

Three Glaives, three civilians. It looked like they were evacuating the civilians out.

Somewhere way down the street waited a vehicle that Ignis only saw because of the lights being on. The lights were way too bright, but after a while of thinking about it, he realised that this was likely a rather enormous truck that would hold all the civilians the Glaives had found still in the city. He pinches the bridge of his nose as the looks away from the lights and hurries back into a street these people did not take earlier to avoid the Glaives returning after helping the civilians into the truck. He didn’t recognise any of these people; one of them decidedly looked like a tan Lucian hunter, and one had a strange tattoo that reminded him of the Galahdian ones, but the third hunter was a tall woman he couldn’t exactly place. Likely one of the Niffs, then; quite a few of the civilians who made it to the city picked up a weapon and asked to be taught the way of hunters at the very least. Those Niffs that Noctis accepted as Glaives all were civilians; none of the ones involved with the military beforehand were allowed to share the power of Lucians kings.

Surprisingly enough those people seemed to accept that.

He backed further into the alley when his thoughts started racing again. It had only been two days. Only two. Why were the Glaives acting _now_ of all times? Had Cindy made it back to Lestallum in just a single day of driving? Without breaks?

It didn’t make sense at all. With Prompto bleeding out on the back seat he was assuming that she left her friend’s corpse to turn into a Daemon. Something or someone must have come across them.

Someone with an airship.

That already narrowed down the amount of people who could have gotten Cindy back to Lestallum just in time for her to tell Noctis that it was high time they got the civilians out of the city. Aranea had been reported out of Lucis at the time, but there were a few others of her mercenary group that knew how to fly an airship, and a good amount of other Niflheim militaries in Lestallum knew how to handle an airship. Ignis sighed and dragged a hand down his face; thinking about this wasn’t getting him anywhere. The fact that someone might have gotten Cindy to Lestallum rather quickly via air transport remained, and it would certainly explain why Lestallum had acted so quickly on the civilians.

The Glaives and the civilians acted like they had trained that before. It didn’t really surprise him; Ardyn had made a point in telling the Daemons to avoid the civilians as long as they did not step beyond an invisible line somewhere outside their hiding place. Not even Ignis could override a command like that, and the way they moved through the city was efficient enough to make the Daemons consider attacking but waiting to see if there weren’t easier positions to attack from.

Now that Ignis was here they had given up on that prey. He was the second-highest on the food chain, only behind the Accursed in this scenario. And Ardyn remained absent from the city for some reason or another, which meant that Ignis had the first dibs on those pesky humans walking around.

Not that he wanted to tear them into pieces. The thought of attacking them made his stomach turn; finally his conscience was having a fit after he attacked Prompto. He was fully aware that he did not give a damn about the Niff he had killed, on the other hand.

He decided to leave this place, sit on the roof of a skyscraper and let these people escape in peace. At least that would mean that there would be nothing bad happening to innocent people just in case he found something to take Ardyn down with before he turned into a Daemon. There was absolutely no way that a fight like this wouldn’t leave lasting scars on the city. Just as Noctis’ sacrifice would leave lasting scars on the city in any event.

He entered the first building, fighting back an urge to cough. Trying to at least vaguely hope there was still a solution to this was harder than he expected it to be.

It had been so long. So, so very long. He had finally found a solution, but as it turned out he had ruined that chance because of the Scourge. Tracing back all his steps taken so far, it was rather clear that he should not have gone with Ardyn in the first place. But every time he went back to that day in Altissia, all he heard was Ravus’ sobs and that distorted voice telling someone that just as the people had sacrificed all for the king, the king would have to sacrifice all for the people. It could have easily been Ignis who sat there on his knees, sobbing, with blood running down his face after having gotten into a fight with Ravus after nearly killing Lunafreya in a fit of grief.

But every time he went to the point where he was pinned to the ground, with Ravus collapsed in the background and a thin line of blood running out of his mouth, with Ardyn standing there and grinning at him, offering him to come along with the chancellor rather than dying here together with Noctis… every time he went back there, all he saw was red. He had gone with Ardyn because that would mean that Noctis would be left here to die, or for Ravus to decide his face once Ravus regained consciousness. If he had chosen to fight, he would have had to fight the others off, would have had to find a way to fight off the almost omniscient-seeming Chancellor of Niflheim with his bare hands, with his broken and bruised bones, with the soreness and tiredness that had settled in his body. In the end, going with Ardyn was the wiser choice, because that at least meant Noctis would have gotten away.

He continued climbing the stairs with a furious energy he didn’t know he had at this point.

Perhaps he shouldn’t have bent his head to the man once he reached the Crystal. That was another point where he could have chosen differently. Instead of trying to play obedient and disappointed, he could have used the Ring of the Lucii he had dutifully collected before he had fallen unconscious at the Altar of the Tidemother. Could have tried fighting back normally even if he would have wound up sliced into fine ribbons long before that. He knew now how powerful illusions were, what frightening power they were when interlaced with two thousand years of spite and both the very source of the Scourge as well as the knowledge of how the Crystal operated without having control over it. Ardyn would have torn him into shreds unless the Ring of the Lucii accepted him and lent him some of its power.

Then again, it had given Nyx Ulric its power for a while. The man had succeeded in what he wanted to do, and then died as the sun rose in Insomnia. Perhaps Ignis would have managed to undo the chains of destiny a little, could have made Ardyn regenerate from a violent fight and given Noctis and the others enough time to figure something out together with Ravus. That alone would have made Ignis die content enough, even more content if Noctis had been there.

He stopped his hands a few centimetres away from the door to the roof. He saw how it trembled.

By the gods, the thing he was most terrified of even at this point was dying alone, on enemy territory, without Noctis. Even if his death in this case meant turning into one of these horrible creatures that they had fought throughout their journey across Lucis, likely not retaining a shred of sense and instead hunting down people wildly and without thought. The urge to scream right now was overwhelming, but Ignis managed to force his hand onto the door and wrenched it open with a gasp.

“I felt kinda like a monster, trying to get that information outta her. ‘Specially since she was sobbing her eyes out.”

The voice rang clear, without a tremble. Without an emotion. Ignis stared at the person standing on top of this very roof like a deer caught in the headlights. No, like a Daemon caught in the headlights. Because that was what this situation was like.

“But the girl spoke. Told me that it wasn’t a Daemon attack like she told me when I saw that damned Daemon fly away. Said that it was _you_ on the back of that thing, and that I have to thank you for yet another death rather close and personal.”

Aranea Highwind turned around, her weapon in one hand and loosely by her side. Niflheim’s most infamous mercenary, one of the few surviving dragoons, and a person who had been accepted as partner by one of the Lucii. The right hand of the High Commander as darkness fell, effectively one of the head figures in Lestallum and directly responsible for maintenance and upkeep of the airships while the rest worked together with Cid Sophiar to manage the mechanical weaponry. A woman who had already been kind of a big deal before the war had ended, and a woman who had packed her things up and left the empire by the time Ignis had decided to start playing the role of a traitor.

“Ignis Scientia. I’ve got a few questions for you,” she said slowly, “and don’t even try to run away from me.”

In the short time they had been allies, Ignis and Aranea had reached a level of mutual understanding. They were both tacticians in their own regard, were both considered the brains of their groups, both handled an intense amount of responsibility. It was a similar wavelength, something that was missing between Gladio and Ignis when it came to down to the finest of details – Aranea and Ignis meanwhile seemed to think the absolutely same things. Until a certain point he even understood that her morals were kicking in now rather than any time before; she was a mercenary and owed her allegiance to money rather than the country she grew up in, but at this point the money she was receiving was drenched in the blood of her own countrymen who had done no wrong. Her eventual desertion made sense, and Ignis would have done the same in her position.

He also understood now why she was here. For a short moment he thanked himself for always carrying the Trident of the Oracle with him everywhere. Though perhaps a polearm against a polearm would mean he would lose the fight. No matter how good he had become according to Ardyn – there was a reason why Aranea was considered the top of the crop when it came to martial arts with a mechanical spear, let alone the fact that she was one of the few practising modern day dragoons.

He sighed and shrugged at her.

“What makes you believe I would have run away?”

“’Cause that’s what you’ve been doing all along. You’re running from something, and always right back into the chancellor’s oh-so-loving embrace.”

He had nothing to say back at that. She was right, and they both knew it.

“Whatever it is you’re trying to do, it’s backfiring bad on you, ain’t it?”

“Is that one of the questions I’m supposed to answer, or a rhetoric one?”

“You been away from humans for so long that you can’t tell any longer?”

Again he stared at her, this time kind of dumbfounded.

She did have a point with that. It had been long, way too long, since he had had a _normal_ conversation with _anyone._ Ardyn was hard to predict, Ardyn never lied but also never really considered anyone else’s feelings when speaking. The man was strange and jittery; not that they spoke much to begin with. Generally speaking to Ardyn meant that Ignis was on his last legs, about to pass out from blood loss during the so-called training sessions – or the man has having one of his odd episodes where he talked about things he likely was trying to remember himself, forgotten fragments of a past that was by now so laced with spite and anger and bitterness and _loneliness_ that Ignis was never quite sure what to actually make of them.

Aranea had been in the army. Though Ardyn himself claimed no control over the army by itself, surely she would have had to deal with the man, usually at his worst. No strangely lucid episodes, always the man who delivered a brutal beatdown and then started tearing into his opponent’s form. The man who ignored sarcasm and rhetoric questions. It would explain why she had given in to his likely casual suggestion of taking the literal wayward King of Lucis that the entire empire was after alive or dead into a dungeon as ‘trainees’.

Aranea still hadn’t made a mode. In fact, it only looked like she was holding her weapon in case he attacked her.

Down in the street the Glaives continued getting the civilians to the truck.

“Are you merely trying to distract me?”

“I’m asking the questions, Scientia, but if you want the answer to that, you’ll have to catch me first.”

Of course Aranea had noticed how he handled a lance back in the ruins of Steyliff. She had commented on his jumps as they made their way through the place, how he was using his weight differently than a fully trained dragoon would but it gave him a slight speed advantage – in theory, anyway. Aranea’s jumps and leaps and bounds were stronger and more forceful, got her further up or further along, all while her impressive weapon traced arcs in the air or felt like it could shatter solid rock underneath it every time she plunged it into a downward strike. Ignis’ inability to go as high up or as far along meanwhile ensured that he was always around to help his comrades, and Aranea had called that the most striking difference between them as they made their way back up to the exit.

It was clear that Ignis was used to fighting alongside other people, was counted on in return and definitely knew where he belonged on a battlefield. A dragoon meanwhile was expected to close distances to get from one front to another all by themselves, fought by themselves for the most part, and mostly had no one else to count on wheresoever they went. Aranea was a loner – Ignis was not.

Now their roles seemed reversed, but he knew right away that there was absolutely no way that he would be outjumping her if It came down to chasing her after all. They were both older, they were both stronger; but in Aranea’s case that meant that her already very impressive skill had only improved, and she had furthered that skill by learning how to fight in a group rather than as the loner she had claimed she was while looking at the bewitching ceiling back in Steyliff. Ignis meanwhile had lost that component entirely. He fought by himself, fought dirtier and more desperately now.

She traced a half circle on the roof with her spear before pointing it at him.

“Do you really fucking hate me that much that you gotta do this?”

He blinked a few times. She was staring at the ground, her free hand trembling slightly as she curled it into a fist.

“First Ravus, now Loqi… are we gonna have to call off the wedding because you’re gonna be killing either of the grooms next week just ‘cause of something I said or did, or whatever it is?”

He said nothing. He had not the slightest idea who she was talking about, or why she was that upset over him hypothetically killing one of these people he didn’t even know. Those two were likely part of her mercenary group – not people he knew.

His silence only seemed to agitate her, however. A shudder went through her entire body as she took a deep breath; her voice was shaking slightly.

“Answer me. Why? Why’d you kill Ravus after you fought together in Altissia?”

Because he hadn’t been in full control of himself. Because he was trying to survive this situation, because something in his head switched off. Because this awful, Scourge-ridden self of his had acted without thinking, because it had registered Ravus as a danger to him and his mission. Because he was a self-righteous asshole, because everything had gone wrong, so awfully wrong.

“He was in my way.”

“That’s _all?_ That’s the whole fucking reason?”

Of course not; there were layers to this that even he himself did not understand yet and likely never would because he was losing his human existence at an alarming rate. “Yes.”

Aranea Highwind had always been one of the more laid back Niffs around. She took them into Steyliff with a grin on her face and a roll of the eyes as her companions told her to stay safe in there. She dropped into fights against Daemons from her airship with a whooping battle cry, a sign of a woman enjoying her life and enjoying a good fight in the wilderness, even if she was working together with her supposed enemies. For someone who claimed they didn’t like working overtime, she sure did a lot of overtime without ever telling her employers about it; it ensured that they remained relatively safe in the night when Aranea was around and also meant that no imperials would be coming after them because her airship was already there.

But right now she trembled. There was anger seemingly sparking off her in radiant waves, an emotion so reminiscent of the other Niff he’d come across recently that it made the gears in his head turn. Churn, more like.

“You know,” he began slowly, fully aware that he would be regretting these words, “your anger might be righteous, but that is precisely what killed your… other friend.”

“And you know that blondie’s not opening his eyes, and that sweet mechanic’s been so heartbroken that she didn’t even manage leaving his side to attend yet another funeral pyre?”

For a moment his more rational side wanted to flinch away from the furious hiss. Prompto still being unconscious at least meant that he was _alive_ , and Cindy’s heartbreak was something he risked to get away from the situation back near the Rock of Ravatogh.

“I don’t _care_ that I feel like I shouldn’t be the one alive instead of Loqi or Ravus – but what on fucking earth did Cindy ever do to you!?”

Ravus Nox Fleuret, the High Commander and the sole survivor of an ancient family, just as Noctis Lucis Caelum was the sole survivor of an ancient family. They had managed to bridge the chasm between them, they had worked together to offer the people who lived in the dark a city they could call home. A safe city, one with just enough resources for everyone. Aranea had worked a lot with him, had likely spent a lot of time with him because they had been part of the same army, because they knew each other, because he was her superior. Whatever their relationship was, they were close due to the fact that their tasks overlapped a lot. She’d likely heard him talk about his sister’s destiny, about his own destiny, about all the trials and tribulations of being a stranger in a strange country, of being the sole survivor when all he ever wanted was his sister to be happy. He had been a person she had likely considered someone she could talk to with no danger of being judged for it, someone who understood what it felt like to be the former enemy suddenly taking an important role in the fallen country’s main city.

Loqi Tummelt was a noble from a small province, someone who had witnessed something so deeply disturbing that he had thrown himself into the open arms of the military just to forget. Someone who worked in the field like she had, someone who tasted both victory and defeat, someone who had a goal that was completely nuts but something to strive for regardless. He couldn’t really tell because he did not know the man before he killed him, but there was undeniably something like kinship between the Niffs, and Aranea and Loqi were no exception to the rule. They were co-workers, they both knew what the Lucians didn’t, or at least as much as the government let them know. Two people who devoted soul and body to the military because there was nothing else for them; two people who wanted to love their home countries and wanted to believe that they were right. Perhaps not superiority in the end, but definitely something like a love for a country that they realised had never existed in the end.

Both of them had had jobs or destinies – Ravus had all but taken Ignis’ role as right hand of the king, Loqi had managed to forge a friendship with Lucians and shown his people that it was possible that people forgave them their sins. Both had died way too early, both by Ignis’ hands. That Aranea felt like she, the oldest of those three, should have been the one to die was… both surprising and not surprising. Most veteran soldiers were like this; Cor had often acted exactly the same when it came to younger recruits dying in fights that were completely unnecessary.

“And the king!”

Ignis blinked slowly. Noctis was the last person he had thought she would bring up.

“He’s still keeping on a front for everyone, and thinks we believe that he’s fine – he’s not! You being here instead of by his side is tearing him apart! Don’t you have a god damn heart any longer? Your shitty reasoning for Ravus and whatever your bullshit excuses for Loqi and any others you might’ve killed so far all aside; does King Noctis mean nothing to you?”

Noctis meant more to him than the world. A world without Noctis was not worth living in, the world did not deserve that sacrifice that Noctis had been born to make. Even through all mutters and screeches of the Scourge that ran through his veins at this point, every fibre of his body agreed with one thing.

He loved Noctis Lucis Caelum so much that the though of him dying to save the world killed Ignis from the inside out.

They glared at one another for a few moments.

* * *

A dragoon’s training was taxing, and even just vaguely copying some of their skills was among the hardest things one could do. Since the Lucian kings and queens were skilled in the art of chaining one warp after another, as was the Kingsglaive when King Regis founded it, it made sense for the enemy nation Niflheim to develop a training tactic that could likely outlast a warping royal out for blood. With the help of machinery and trickery, a bunch of mercenaries managed to learn the art of jumping extremely high and extremely far, learned how to use weight or the lack thereof to create an almost destructive power no matter the skill level of the dragoon.

Ignis himself was almost clumsy compared to Aranea.

They had hurled towards each other with a yell, every swing of their weapons met with a parry from the other. Ignis had the speed and stamina advantage thanks to Ardyn’s very peculiar training methods, Aranea had the strength and skill advantage due to her experience in her field. It was a dance to the two of them, since skilled wielders of a polearm were surprisingly rare in a world dominated by blades. A few times Aranea had stayed after dropping in on a Daemon hunt, usually when dawn was close enough. She’d stayed, had even been receptive to Noctis’ joking challenges. A training regimen, of a sort, something similar to what she put her mercenary group through when they had their training sessions. Noctis had a knack for air strikes like most Lucian royals. Aranea with her skills and weapon made an excellent training parter for repeated warps and enemies in the air fighting back. Her sheer strength made blocking her rather hard, something that Gladio trained with her. In the end it helped him with blocking even a fully powered swing of a Red Giant. Prompto had a hard time keeping up with a fight if he got knocked around somehow, but after Aranea started deliberately picking on him in training sessions he quickly caught up.

Ignis and Aranea meanwhile made it less of a serious thing and more like a fun brawl. He picked up quite a lot from watching her, but picked up even more from fighting against her. He had the advantage of being able to switch his weapons on the go, could follow up a thrown dagger with a powerful swipe of some sort. Aranea herself knew most of these tactics, having been taught how the Kingsglaive operated – even though the four of them were king and Crownsguard, their tactics were pretty similar to what the Kingsglaive had used in the field when they were fighting human opponents rather than hordes of Daemons and MTs.

After the several more precisely parried blows, Aranea and Ignis hopped backwards, away from one another for a few seconds.

There were more skyscrapers here, but it was rather easy to see that Ignis himself had no way off this building without risking breaking every bone in his body. He had seen as much when he and Aranea had started their fight, but he had not accounted for a change in Insomnia. A flying Daemon passed the skyscraper they were standing on.

That gave him just enough leverage to jump from this roof to another. For a moment he and the dragoon glared at each other, then Ignis whirled around and jumped.

Aranea did not hesitate the slightest once she figured out where he was going – they clashed in mid-air, and Ignis was once more impressed by her sheer _strength._ This was a woman who had perfected her art, had trained likely until she bled and all of that to make certain her excellent reputation was earned. A Niff who held herself to an impossibly high standard, a Niff who had morals despite the fact she was quite literally a killing machine just as the rest of them were. An armoured boot hit his chest and sent him crashing onto the skyscraper he had been trying to land on. Ignis yelped, rolled around and immediately jumped back to his feet.

Aranea landed with a heavy thud and did not hesitate to immediately swing her weapon into his direction.

There was a crease on her face that made him wonder what was going through her head, however. Something was off according to her, but he had no idea what she was thinking.

The Daemons continued circling nearby, giving him the step he needed to bounce from building to building with Aranea following behind. Once he turned around on a Daemon and jumped back to the previous building, watching her and her powerful leap go right past him. That was one of the weaknesses of powerful jumps like that; dragoons were able to close impressive gaps with their leaps, but they couldn’t turn around that easily. That was what she always called his speed advantage.

He staggered as he landed, Aranea landing heavily behind him.

“You don’t have a fucking clue what you’re doing, do you?” Her voice was… surprisingly gentle for someone trying to kill him. “You did all of this because you had a brilliant plan you didn’t tell anyone of, and now it’s all gone to hell and you’re too far in to stop now.”

He turned around, and the Trident of the Oracle met the Stoss Spear with a loud clang. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Again the strange expression, like she wasn’t entirely certain what to make of this situation. Then she shook her head slightly.

“Ravus and Loqi were just… collateral damage, weren’t they? You’re trying to do something with the desperation of a man who has nothing to lose, and those two stood in your way or offered you something. A way out, probably – Ravus wanted to kill you, so you killed him in a fit of self-preservation because of the Scourge. Loqi cornered you, so you chose the weakest link to get out, but instead of leaving when you had the upper hand you decided that it was time to _ruin_ any chance of returning to Lestallum.”

Was there any point in lying to her? Ignis and Aranea both swung their weapons again, again parrying the other and taking a few steps backwards. He chose to say nothing, merely glared at her as she adjusted her stance slightly with a sigh.

Maybe she wasn’t trying to kill him after all; though his self-preservation instinct was yelling at him to run her through or get away. Or both.

While he was considering his options once more, Aranea made a move. His already sore body screeched in pain when he again hit his chest, and he barely managed to avoid her spear. He felt it tear into his side just as he had done with Prompto, with the exception that Ignis’ wound was just a scratch compared to that. He got back to his feet and stood there for a second, trying to ignore the seething pain in his side.

It only triggered his coughing fits, and Aranea watched with a frown as her opponent doubled over, started hacking until he felt like he was about to throw up. But all that happened was the same as had happened just yesterday. Blood, all he could taste was his own blood and it was positively _revolting._ This time he did not pass out and instead looked up at her, with blood on his face, with it dribbling off his chin like his body hadn’t just tried to make him hack up his lungs underneath his bruised ribs.

“… Fucking hell.” She looked… shocked. “You’re damn far gone, you know what? Your strength’s already not normal, your reaction speed’s fucking weird compared to what it was like before, but… I hadn’t considered you gone so far that you likely have no idea what consequences your actions have because all you can think of is whatever the hell your goal is and living until you achieve it.”

Ignis’ mind reeled for a few seconds before he realised that of course Aranea would know about things. She had had access to Zegnautus Keep, had probably known some of the more mellow researchers and scientists. Had likely read over a few reports that suggested the ‘vanishing sickness’ Ardyn had mentioned with a laugh was the populace turning into Daemons. There were some observed cases, and she had likely figured out that the emperor’s obsessions was fuelled by his infection.

She actually relaxed her stance a little. That had always been Aranea’s way of telling them that their fight was over.

The woman looked like she was about to burst into tears.

“I get it now. And understanding this is why I cornered you.” She shook her head quickly. “You don’t have a vendetta against me so you take the people who mean the most to me. You’re just a god damn idiot who didn’t think this through and broke your own heart and several other people’s in the progress of your moronic actions. And now you’re perfectly in Ardyn’s arms like the tool he wanted you to be, even if you didn’t intend for this to happen.”

An addict, of some sort. That was what she didn’t say, that was what the voice in the back of his mind whispered. He had made himself depend on the Accursed as he waited for the man to show a weakness, to give a hint on how to end this without Noctis having to die for it.

“… Noct...”

An obsession, of the unhealthy kind. The most unhealthy kind, actually. He was obsessed with the thought of walking out of this mess getting what he wanted. Even if that meant he’d be waiting for Ardyn at the end of the road, somewhere in the undefined mess that was whatever happened after death, and knowing that Noctis lived.

Aranea rammed her spear into the roof and Ignis flinched.

“Well, let’s think of it that way. In four days, let’s finish this fight. Somewhere less… cityscape from hellish. The statue of the Mystic in front of the former settlement of Keycatrich. Let’s meet there. And let’s finish this fight. Either with you telling me your proper reasons for killing my fellow countrymen and the… High Commander. No, my fellow people of Lestallum. Either with you telling me that, or you killing me for real this time.”

All he could really do was nod vaguely. He was rather disoriented, all things considered. His thoughts were racing; all of a sudden he had little to no interest in Aranea and only wanted to see Noctis. Wanted to tell him everything about the prophecy, wanted to tell him that there had to be a way to avoid this nonsense.

“… Fine.”

Instead of saying anything else, Ignis dove off the building. Aranea yelped in surprise, running to the side he dove off.

He landed squarely on his feet like a trained dragoon. The Trident of the Oracle had lessened the impact a little, but his bruised and broken ribs hurt so bad that he had to double over and hacked some more.

Aranea didn’t follow him as he staggered through the streets like a drunk man, away from that blood he had spat on the ground.

He crumpled to his knees in front of the sleeping Cerberus when he reached the Citadel and passed out for a few moments. Heavens above he needed rest. Needed to stop _thinking._

* * *

Ardyn did patch him up.

The cold feeling of torn tissue knitting itself back together and the broken bones realigning themselves was something completely foreign to Ignis – he realised that Ardyn had been taking care of his injuries for the past few years. That was why only a scar remained where the Blademaster’s weapon had been stuck in his shoulders, that was why he hadn’t bled out after attacking Ravus.

Against his feverish skin, that magic felt like the promise of peace, and Ignis relaxed before he could remember that he was all but leaning his head against Ardyn’s shoulder.

Not that the Accursed said anything. The man looked… like he was thinking of something himself. Maybe the Mystic was haunting him again.

The Mystic.

Gods, he barely remembered that statue in front of Keycatrich, but now that Aranea had mentioned it, it was rather clear that this was the perfect place for a fight. In front of the Founder King’s eyes, but she did not know that this man was the Accursed’s brother and one of the reasons why Noctis would have to die. Perhaps he could destroy that statue, since the one used in the Old Wall was effectively Ardyn’s possession at this point. Ignis _understood_ the sheer amount of anger and hatred that Ardyn went through after the gods decided that this was the way it had to be instead of addressing what had gone wrong and offering a less stupid solution.

He said nothing when he left three days later.

Ardyn barely acknowledged him, except for a moment where he narrowed his eyes.

There was absolutely no doubt that Ardyn would find him if he wanted to; and Keycatrich was not that far away. Just few hours of travel.

A lousy few hours.

But he had agreed to Aranea’s suggestion, and to be quite honest he wanted to fight her fair and square. Wanted to tear her into ribbons since Ravus and Loqi had died comparatively clean deaths.

If only it weren’t for this strange sense of foreboding as he left the city on the back of a Daemon. Something about this challenge… was off. Something was about to go horribly wrong, on top of everything else that had already gone horribly wrong. He coughed a little, with the Ring of the Lucii seemingly burning a hole in his pocket.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... all I really have to say is. the single biggest thing younger me wanted to do, ever, was writing something with 100k words. I did that last year with Amaranthus, but... man, I'm kinda floored.  
>  a big thanks to everyone who's been with this wild ride from whatever point you joined me at. things are gonna be coming to a head soon. like, the thing I started writing this fic for is coming up. not next chapter, but... soon.


	37. our last waltz apart

Aranea turned away from the pyre and stalked off. Noctis’ gaze followed her for a while until she briskly whisked around a corner and went into a direction that he didn’t recognise right now.

Everything from the last 24 hours seemed like he had done it in a haze of nausea and worry.

Gladio, Iris and he had returned to the city, had discussed what to do next when they had gotten a call from Aranea. She was on her way back to Lestallum, but had had to make a detour to the Cartanica reason because apparently a bunch of Tenebraen scouts and hunters had managed to find a bunch of medical resources and offered to share with the City of Light in Lucis. She’d gotten that transmission because they knew her frequency, and she’d decided to pick that up.

A few hours of silence, and then the transmitter crackled to life again.

Aranea again, but this time she had said that she had had to pick something up. Her voice sounded rather subdued, like she was either about to start crying or about to start screaming until she passed out, but she didn’t say what it was that she had had to pick up. The only other thing she said was that someone needed to get a medical transport ready as soon as possible.

When the airship landed, Noctis had already been expecting a pile of corpses.

What actually happened seemed like a slideshow right out of his worst nightmares. The way Prompto looked and the way Cindy was torn between staying behind or going with him, and then going with him. Not that Prompto _walked._ He was the reason they had to get doctors on the stage, to transport him somewhere where they could take care of his blood loss and the injuries.

Aranea’s commands were rather dull when she told her mercenaries to get the stuff and bring it to the places that needed it. Aranea herself went and got the last thing off the airship when all material from Tenebrae had been removed.

The last thing was Loqi Tummelt. Less injured than Prompto, but definitely dead. Aranea herself had said that she hadn’t even had the heart to close his eyes, since Cindy hadn’t either while she fought to keep her composure with her bleeding and dead companions on the ground as she set up the distress signal that Aranea picked up.

It felt wrong, just as it had felt wrong when news came in that Cor had been found. Just as it had been more than surreal to carry Ravus back to Lestallum. Part of him wanted to immediately storm after Cindy, but the mechanic looked like she could use the silence of a hospital room right now, knowing that at least one of her companions made it out alive. So far.

Noctis must have stood there staring blankly after Aranea for a while, because he had no idea how much time passed by the time someone moved into his vision to pull him into an embrace of some sort.

It was softer than anything either of the Amicitias would have done. He wiggled slightly, uncertain what to do or whose name to call until he saw her face.

Monica was a woman of few words. She was not someone he had ever spent a lot of time with, nor someone he knew even just the slightest bit about. She was around Cor’s age, one of the few people to have known him before he was made Marshal of the Crownsguard. Someone who followed orders, someone who was extremely knowledgeable and who knew a lot about the world. Enough to learn about obscure wildlife like the Adamantoise, enough to figure out which breed of Coeurl was haunting that particular part of the country and how the festering Scourge infection was making it stronger and weaker.

Come to think of it, she was also not someone to approach royalty so casually, let alone being someone who _hugged_ the King of Lucis.

His mind had been racing in that moment – until he remembered that she had lost a friend to the dark. She’d also been unable to to anything but stand around and stare holes into the air.

“He’s going to be fine, Your Majesty,” was all she whispered when she let go.

Now she watched the pyre with a wistful expression on her face, just as Noctis likely did.

There was a surprising amount of Lucians and Tenebraens and Accordans around. No matter how bristly he had been, in the end Loqi had been part of the group they had to thank for the fragile bridges they had built between their countries. Perhaps not the friendliest of the bunch, but still someone who listened to the troubles of others, who went out into the field just like everyone else.

Aranea had asked Cindy about that broken neck, of course. As Aranea reported, a Daemon had attacked the three of them as they were on their way back to the car to get back with what they had learned – absolutely nothing, and the Commodore’s shoulders had drooped. Cindy traumatised, Prompto injured and Loqi dead, and all for nothing.

Noctis watched sparks fly upwards.

He felt less numb than he had with Cor and Ravus. Hells, he did not feel like a part of him had been ripped out, but that was perhaps the thing that upset him the most. He hadn’t known this man that much, nowhere near as much as Aranea, Cindy and Prompto had. None of these three were present. But most people here looked subdued, sad perhaps. There were a handful Niffs crying, even. But somehow this entire process remained quiet – he had never watched people quietly stand during a pyre like this. With Cor, Iris had sobbed loudly into her brother’s shoulder. With Ravus, the moment Aranea and her people had paid him their last homage with the Tenebraen custom, the Tenebraens present had just broken down and wailed loudly.

But right now, everyone was silent. Some watched the sparks fly. Others stared into the fire with tears streaming down their faces.

It wasn’t eerie, for some reason. This silence felt… right. Perhaps this was a proper Niff way of saying goodbye – in utter silence, with only the occasional sniffle. With everyone standing with their backs straight and their heads held relatively high.

Noctis straightened up some more between Gladio and Monica.

Might as well do this properly, even if he hadn’t known Loqi that much. The Niff had still been an influence on Lestallum, someone who had managed to break his own pride and lay his country’s crimes open as far as he knew.

Honouring someone with that much courage was the least he could do.

* * *

The people in the room agreed that no matter the status of Hammerhead, they had to get the civilians out of Insomnia. They had finally managed to create a route that would allow them to get them into a truck and out into the relatively safe Lestallum after tracking Daemon movement for ages. Unless there were crass shifts in behaviour, this would be efficient enough to get these forty-odd people out. There were casually optimistic agreements between all people present, reassuring shoulder pats and forwarding that to the Glaives currently stationed in the city via transmitter.

The one who only nodded grimly was Aranea. She stood away from the rest of the people with her arms crossed and a deep frown on her face. She had returned by the time the fire had been out and most people had left, and had only crouched down next to where the fire had been, with a hand on the ground. Noctis had hesitated to approach her to tell her that they were meeting in a few hours, had caved eventually and crouched down next to her. She hadn’t said anything when he told her when the meeting was, and had left her to stare at the last glimmers of the pyre with that sad look on her face. But right now she looked oddly determined, like the fire that burned in her heart had been rekindled.

“Hey, Your Majesty.”

She approached him when the others had left and Noctis was about to leave as well. He froze, unsure what to make of whatever conversation he was about to have with the remaining member of what people had jokingly called the Niff Commando Triangle.

“Yes?”

She still had her arms crossed as she huffed. “That’s gonna sound intrusive as fuck all, but… can I have your opinion on what the hell’s going on with your former advisor?”

He hadn’t thought about Ignis since he had run into Ardyn in the wild. He hadn’t had the time to do so until now, because he had been in too much emotional turmoil after learning that Ardyn was a Lucis Caelum.

“… What do you mean?”

Aranea sighed and relaxed her pose a little. Her hands were curled into fists but at least her arms weren’t crossed any longer when she continued speaking. “You convinced us all that he’s being controlled by that shithead Ardyn. You still believe that, or has something changed? Iris still seems to believe so. Gladiolus not so much. Monica refuses to have an opinion on the matter, and so on. But what do _you_ think about it right now?”

Noctis considered telling her that he still believed that Ignis was being controlled. It would have been the easiest lie in the world, one that might have convinced himself that Ignis would never do this.

But Ignis was someone who often did stupid, dangerous, antagonistic things when Noctis’ safety was involved. He would never hurt someone else without a reason, and causing Noctis distress was a reason that made Ignis go from the polite and cold advisor to someone who would bend the laws of the universe as long as the situation became better for Noctis.

“I want to believe it, Aranea. But… the longer I think about it… He’s probably trying to keep me safe from _something._ Except he’s so deep in it that there’s no way out any longer.”

Aranea nodded, slowly. “I hadn’t considered that before.”

Whatever else she considered she never said – she bowed, thanked him, and left. She was on the group headed for Insomnia anyway.

She could use the sleep.

Noctis remained stuck in the city.

* * *

“Any changes?”

Cindy shook her head slightly. She looked like she hadn’t caught any sleep, and Noctis was fairly certain that he did not look any better.

The situation was unchanged. Prompto remained unconscious. The doctors said that perhaps this was the best – he had lost a lot of blood. That way at least his body could recover.

They said nothing about the likely mental state that Prompto would awaken in. Cindy, too, remained silent.

He put a hand on her shoulder, and she cringed.

This was a very far cry from the almost bubbly mechanic they had met when they had first left the crown city. She’d been a steadfast supporter despite her lack of combat experience; she’d always welcomed them with a smile and a loud greeting whenever they pulled into Hammerhead. Had clapped hands on their backs while talking, had effectively been the most lively person around even when she left her home to come pull them out of a ditch they had wound up in because of Noctis’ driving. Her fiddling with the upgrades, her persistence in making it work even when it seemed like it wouldn’t.

She had brought that selfsame persistence into the dark, and though her smiles were less bright because at the end of the day she was still scared of the dark they were always welcoming and friendly. The Niffs were relaxed around her despite the fact that she was one of the louder Lucians. The kids around the city loved her – and Cindy in turn loved them. Noctis did not doubt for a second that she normally kept her breakdowns to herself, or had them around her grandfather, somewhere secluded. Kind of like Noctis himself.

“Cindy? Are you alright?”

“’m unhurt.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

She shook her head again. “I’ll havta be fine.”

Still, she… looked guilty, somehow. Noctis didn’t press the issue, however; he got up and just told her to call for him if anything changed.

* * *

The more time passed, the more painful this place became.

Everyone had agreed that preserving flowers from around the planet in this place was something they ought to do; it would give people a place to relax somehow in the middle of this city. The greenhouses were absolutely vital in the upkeep of Lestallum, but this part of them had no nutritional value. It were just flowers, all of them growing in abundance now that they had been crossed with others so they could be kept in the same place. At first he had only gotten this melancholic when he had looked at the Sylleblossoms. Most people got melancholic when they looked at them, because the last thing the Oracle had promised the public was that this exact thing would not happen, and that she would do everything to help save the planet – and then she had died so pointlessly.

One by one, those flowers got a meaning to him, however. What had been relaxing at first was now a horror trip through his memories. He could almost see all these people he had known, the ones who had talked about one of these flowers. One by one. All of them gathered in this particular part of the greenhouse district.

Noctis didn’t exactly know why he had come here, or what had gotten him to stand in front of perhaps one of the simplest flowers in this place, but here he was. At least he had passed the uncontrollably sobbing his eyes out part and instead could think for a moment.

This particular flower had always grown in the Citadel gardens. A deep dark blue, some with lighter splashes. For a moment he saw Ignis and himself as kids, before the Marilith incident, standing in a garden with those flowers blooming in the background, with Ignis talking about how they reminded him of the night sky. Then he tossed that ball he was holding, and the memory fizzled out like a candle in a sudden gust of wind.

Someone cleared their throat behind him, and Noctis turned around.

Monica again.

She was usually in the field, was almost single-handedly responsible for maintaining contact with Accordo for the most part, though Cid helped her with that following his arrival in the city. Weskham had asked for her in particular for the correspondence because as much as he claimed to like “Clarus’ boy”, Monica was someone who Cor claimed he could trust without second guesses.

“Yeah?” Noctis was fully aware that he looked like shit. All the crying in the last 48 hours had not been good on him.

Monica said nothing for a moment and looked at the flowers behind him. She probably had other things associated with them, but just like his memories they were likely attached to the Citadel. She probably saw her own ghosts and spectres here, saw her own group of dead people she associated with some of the colours or species in here.

Then, finally she let out a sigh.

“Here.”

She handed him something, and Noctis recognised it as one of the charms that some people carried around. Hells, Monica had one attached to the dog tags she wore just in case something happened to her. But the design was not something he recognised immediately.

“The Sigil of the Warrior,” she said slowly when he raised an eyebrow at her.

“Right,” he muttered when he finally realised what it meant. It was the one that Loqi had carried around, attached to his ridiculous main weapon – the three former members of the empire all wore their sigils attached to their weapons, or had started to. Aranea had worn it like a necklace for a while, but after Ravus’ death she had attached it to her weapon. “How come you have it?”

“Commodore Highwind removed it from the weapon and told me to give it to you so we could find someone else to carry it.”

Noctis reached for the Sigil of the Oracle he carried with him since Ravus’ death. The Lucii were peculiar about their choices, but they had not had to give a sigil to someone else so far. The Mystic, the Fierce and the Rogue remained missing even after they found their former wielders dead, and the Oracle had passed himself into Noctis’ safekeeping. Monica furrowed her brows a little.

“It was always an… odd choice. But now that I had some time to ponder on it, I realised something, Your Majesty.”

He shook his head and looked at her.

“Most people have something that fits them or their fighting style. Hells, even I. But the Warrior seemed oddly unfitting for Loqi Tummelt. But… maybe. Just maybe. Had Cor been alive when the Lucii started choosing their partners… I’m certain the Warrior would have approached him. But he wasn’t – and instead he approached the Niff who once hated Cor with a burning passion.”

Of course – the Katana of the Warrior. He didn’t even have to spend more than a second thinking about it, but he could immediately imagine the flourish of the weapon, the concentrated look. Even though Cor was long dead, he could still imagine the man standing in the training hall at the Citadel with a bunch of Crownsguard trainees around him. He had always considered these strange training sessions of everyone against the Marshal as either something to boost Cor’s ego or to amuse his father.

Ignis had pointed out that it showed the progress of the trainees rather well. Clumsy soldiers became more precise, and inexperienced ones gained more experience between these sessions. He could picture Ignis laughing and leaning against the wall with one arm in his pocket and the other holding the ice pack to his cheek as he said that no matter how far they got, Cor played in a completely different league. But with every session they got closer to vaguely matching him in combat. Though, as Ignis said when he dropped the ice pack on accident and bent over to retrieve it, it wouldn’t do them much good in an actual fight. Mock combat against the Marshal was one thing, but actual danger was something else.

Somehow that man with the Sigil of the Warrior sounded… right. Just as Monica had said.

“Maybe it was an attempt to show that Niffs could be forgiven. Hells, that boy probably thought your ancestors were messing with him, because it was a katana that undid his family.”

A swing of a katana – or the lack thereof.

It made Loqi’s death only more ironic. Another member of the Tummelt family – another broken neck.

He grabbed the sigil she was trying to hand him and nodded. “Hey, Monica?”

“Mhm?”

“The people of Tenebrae forgave Ravus after his death. Do you think that maybe… the family honour of House Tummelt has been restored?”

The woman blinked, sudden exhaustion on her features. She turned around and reached for a Lucian flower Noctis had forgotten the name of, some sort of flower with vague medicinal value.

“I can’t really judge that, Your Majesty,” she said after a minute of silence, her voice a sad whisper more than anything else, “but I’d like to believe that. I know Cor at least would’ve wanted it – and the boy deserved it. It can’t be easy being the last survivor of a family.”

Noctis stared after her as she left. She kept her head held surprisingly high for someone who was definitely about to burst into tears.

He meanwhile was left with the awful realisation that there were quite a lot last survivors of families around. He himself was one – and countless others were. In the end they were all the same in the dark, their nationality did not matter the slightest any longer at this point. Noctis was an orphan. So were Ignis, Aranea, and some of the Tenebraen children and a handful of the Accordan hunters.

* * *

The people from Insomnia were welcomed warmly. Even though the Glaives had told them about it they were apprehensive around the Niffs, and the Niffs gave them space. It was… surprisingly collected, as if they hadn’t just rescued people from the most dangerous prowling grounds in Lucis almost six years into the dark.

Noctis had to admit that he was still more worried about Prompto rather than anything else, but this was a fine respite. Cindy had sworn that she would be calling him as soon as anything changed, and if the mechanic was anything then it was true to her word. Seeing these people arrive and thank the Glaives who had fought off a Necromancer attacking them in the middle of the crowd, and then everyone cheering loudly was… it was something else. Those kinds of celebrations did not happen often.

The spark of a good mood immediately died down when he caught Aranea’s eyes and she gestured at him to follow her.

Something about her expression was rather dire, and while she walked at a casual pace he could see the way she held herself. She was tense. Too tense, perhaps. The civilians hadn’t mentioned her as one of the people who had saved them, even though Aranea generally was one of the first people in the action when it came to operations like this. That was why they had sent her along with that group, even though she had been the one to volunteer for it first.

Aranea’s apartment was in the district they had given the Niffs. It was one of these makeshift ones, hastily built with material they had salvaged from Niflheim’s desolate capital city and transported it here via the airships Aranea commandeered. There were effectively no personal things – it looked as if she didn’t really live in it. Blank walls, neutral colours. Then again she was military; perhaps that was what she was used to.

She offered him a chair. Even just that gesture had a severity to it that made Noctis’ heart skip a beat.

A dreadful sense of foreboding settled in the room as Aranea wordlessly poured some water in two glasses and set one down in front of Noctis. Then she sat down as well, folded her hands in her lap. Closed her eyes, obviously thinking about what to say first.

“Well. I’m sure you remember that conversation we had before I left for Insomnia with the others.”

He nodded, his throat suddenly very dry. That glass of water was very enticing, and he slowly reached for it to sip.

“You know, when I asked you what you thought, I had made my own hypothesis that I wanted to prove. I wanted the civilians to be safe, yes of course, but first and foremost, I wanted to see if it was true. But I ought to begin at the very start of that.” Aranea sighed deeply. “No sugar-coating it, I’ll cut to the chase immediately. It wasn’t theoretically a Daemon that attacked those three. Cindy… lied.”

He blinked a few times. The dreadful sense of foreboding became scathing hot horror as he heard her say that Cindy had lied. His tongue was made of lead as he leaned backwards a little and inhaled slowly. But before Aranea could continue, Noctis managed to get over that horrible feeling that held him in its grip. There was a slim chance that his hunch was wrong.

“Ignis.”

His barely existent hopes were dashed when Aranea opened her eyes again. “That’s what she said in the end, with tears streamin’ down her face and everything.”

Noctis pinched the bridge of his nose with a heavy sigh. His heart was beating so loud Aranea had to hear it – he didn’t want to believe it, but Aranea had never given him reason to believe that she was lying to him. Considering the way she acted, how she had made certain it was just the two of them and no one else around, she absolutely had to be telling the truth. That was the only reason why Aranea would go through all the trouble to get him alone somewhere.

“But yeah. As I was saying, I had made a hypothesis of my own when I approached you for a final opinion on the matter of some sort. I was convinced that Ignis Scientia was actin’ just to piss me off or make my life as miserable as possible.”

Aranea Highwind and Ravus Nox Fleuret had become a duo of some sort in the dark. Where they had previously not really interacted unless the High Commander was giving the Commodore direct orders, they had immediately clicked with one anther in the dark. Neither Ravus nor Aranea went on missions without the other except for a few flights that Aranea did on her own because it was faster that way. But out in the field those two were effectively one entity, long before Noctis and Ravus occasionally went out of the city together. Loqi Tummelt meanwhile was her countryman, a fellow survivor of the way Gralea had fallen, someone who had been in the army with her. While not exactly friends beforehand they quickly worked out what divided them and managed to forge a friendship of a sort within a few weeks of Loqi’s arrival in Lestallum, back when they had had to make certain that his burn wounds did not fester and kill him.

“But what you said made me think. You out of all people know this guy best, I thought. And you were honest to me. Said what you actually thought instead of like, sticking to a lie you keep telling yourself or anything. So I started thinking properly when we were on our way to Insomnia. I wanted to get answers anyway.”

Everything was spinning.

“The reason you weren’t there to help the civilians...”

“I guess it’s because I worked in the dark before the sun stopped rising. But I watched them from another building and caught some movement in an alley. When I went to check it out nothing was there, but one of the doors was slightly ajar. So I figured, why not jump on the roof for better visibility.” She wrung her hands. “Had my spear in my hands just in case one of these flying Daemons thought it could take a dive at me. Well, I was pretty surprised when the ba… bugger opened the door to the roof and stepped out.”

He held his breath for a moment. Aranea said nothing for a while, apparently expecting him to break into questions – but all Noctis did was think about the day he deliberately had left the lights off. How the setting sun gleamed in the windows and made his apartment look like some otherworldly space. He could hear the door click closed once again, could hear Ignis set his case on the ground and coming into the main room with quiet steps, obviously thinking that Noctis had fallen asleep. Their first kiss had been so awkward, what with Noctis falling over the chairs to lunge for Ignis, how he pulled his much taller advisor down, how Ignis’ entire body body went stiff when he did that.

“You know he’s down with the Scourge?” Her question made the memory pop like a bubble, and a sharp sting went through his body when he grimaced.

“Yes.”

“How the… never mind. But yeah. It’s a pretty advanced case – now I ain’t a researcher or doctor, but vacant eyes and a fever so strong I could feel it when I was close by is a pretty bad sign. So I asked him if he had a vendetta against me. If he wanted to make my life miserable for some godsforsaken reason. His answer?”

There could have been a million things the Ignis Noctis had fallen in love with would have done. While Ignis was not someone who spoke much, he always had the right gestures for the right situation. He talked with his hands when comfortable, used them too when he was disagreeing with something. Even just the slightest change in expression was so telling with Ignis that Noctis always felt like he was reading his advisor’s mind, something that they joked about when they effectively started dating behind everyone else’s backs. How they could read each other’s minds because they picked up the slightest changes.

Aranea’s answer was something completely untypical for Ignis, however.

“Nothing. He just stared at me with those eerie eyes of someone with a late stage Scourge infection.”

Aranea continued telling her tale, and Noctis was aware that he had started silently crying as soon as she forwarded Ignis’ first actual answer – that Loqi and Ravus had been in his way.

It became rather obvious that she had known a lot more about Ravus in particular than she let on; whatever their relationship had been in the end before his death, it was rather clear that they had shared a lot. Perhaps not the state secrets that the High Commander took into the grave with him, but a lot that very close friends would know about each other. The way she argued that Ravus had likely cornered Ignis and decided to let justice rule before common sense – driving a Scourge-addled man into a life or death situation would absolutely make him lash out violently enough to kill someone – made perfect sense, and he could see that.

She paused at some point, pinched the bridge of her nose. Noctis couldn’t shake the feeling that she was considering skipping something right there, but eventually she dropped her hand back into her lap.

“He didn’t actually say that much. I mean, he wasn’t chatty to begin with, but he barely said anything. Was like talkin’ to a wall, a wall that just so happened to have been the person who murdered two out of four people I’m closest to.”

Biggs and Wedge were alive. Loqi and Ravus were not. The Niffs were in a peculiar situation of having lost quite a lot of very important people to the dark. With the exception of Cor, everyone important to Lucis had died back when the sun still rose. Noctis nodded slowly.

Ignis not talking much generally meant he was upset. Thinking too much.

Aranea continued talking for a while, mentioned how he still had that clever thinking and likely manipulated the flying Daemons to be able to jump from building to building as they fought. Aranea had no intention of killing him, she said, but he fought rather viciously because he thought she was going to. Perhaps that was why he had reacted that way with Ravus, with Loqi. For a terrifying second he considered that perhaps it had been Ignis who had killed Cor.

Aranea grabbed her glass at some point and chugged it down. Almost slammed it back on the table and Noctis flinched as he looked back at her.

“You’re gonna hate my fucking guts for this.” He blinked at her as she kicked her legs against the floor. “But after he nearly started hacking out his lungs, I called quits. I wasn’t really fighting him in earnest anyway, but when he started spitting blood out of thin air, I just… couldn’t.” She had said that she had mildly injured him, yes, but Ignis was what many people called a resilient ratty bastard in actual fights. It was what made him such a good tactician. “… So I challenged him. In a more private place. I hope he actually does come out of the city that way.”

Noctis’ heart completely stopped.

He must have gawked at her rather weirdly because a strange smile crossed her face when she crossed her arms.

“Believe what you will, but I got my answers. He didn’t deny that he was trying to do something and it completely ran out of control. He wasn’t doing this to spite me, and I likely won’t have to bury Biggs or Wedge before they get hitched – at least not because of your advisor. Still, I hope he swallows the bait and comes to Keycatrich in three days. Well, two and a half.” She got up, snatched the glass off the table and put it into the sink. “I’ll getcha there. But I won’t interfere. The outpost is where I’ll drop you – and then you can go get answers for yourself. If he does get lured in, you’ll finally have a chance to talk to him yourself.”

Noctis blinked. His sight was blurry, he was likely about to start crying again and grabbed his glass of water. “What makes you so sure he won’t do to me what he did to Ravus and Loqi?”

And suddenly Aranea’s face lit up a little for a second. Then her smile turned sad, melancholic even and she turned to look out of the window of her little living space.

“Would he still call you ‘Noct’ if he’s so far gone that he’s gonna kill you?”

The glass shattered on the floor.

“… Aranea. Aranea, please, take me there.”

“Wouldn’t have given him that challenge if takin’ you there and staying out of it hadn’t been my intention all along after he said your nickname in such a depressed way.”

* * *

No changes still. At least Cindy was asleep this time, and Noctis only sighed before leaving. Prompto would wake if given enough time. That was what the doctors all promised, and even if they hadn’t always told the truth before the sun set for the final time, they certainly were telling the truth now. There was no point in giving people hope if there was no way of saving someone, and they were blunt like that. If Prompto was said to recover, he would – it would have been worse if they had said that he wouldn’t. Noctis considered patting Cindy on the shoulder before leaving, but it was so early time-wise that he didn’t.

He closed the door quietly and hurried out and through the streets to meet Aranea at her airship.

Surprisingly enough, she was also on her own. Normally she always prepared that airship with at least five members of her crew, more usually than not her two right-hand men Biggs and Wedge. But this time she was completely on her own – and the airship ready.

It was a dull echo of how Ravus had taken them to Gralea years ago. Again with a Niff in an airship, bound to find Ignis. Except that this time he would likely have to fight him. For a moment he felt that knife on his throat again, but he only nodded at the Commodore before they hopped on.

If anyone woke from hearing an airship leave, Noctis couldn’t tell. He was sitting on the floor behind the pilot’s seat at the helm, quietly playing with the dagger that had killed Ravus. The High Commander’s weapon also was on the floor next to him, and Aranea hadn’t said much about it. She hadn’t really acknowledged it, actually; it had long since become a part of him just as it had been a part of Ravus.

Eventually she broke the silence. “You intend to fight with that if it comes down to it, don’t you?”

She was clearly talking about Alba Leonis, and Noctis dismissed the dagger back into the Armiger. “Yes.”

“… Ironic.”

“Eh?”

“I dunno how that bastard Ardyn got his hands on it, but I reckon he gave it to your advisor ages ago. Ignis is using the Trident of the Oracle.”

The last missing piece of his Armiger. He had retrieved and received everything else across Lucis and even gone to Cartanica to unearth the Katana of the Warrior. But the weapon that had been a Tenebraen Oracle’s first and a Lucian King’s second, the royal arm that no Lucian king ever received after that man, was now in Ignis’ hands. Aranea was right as she called it ironic, and Noctis felt all blood drain from his face. He wasn’t ready for this. He would never be ready for this.

It had been Ignis who had sworn to never leave his side after he woke from his coma after the Marilith incident. Whatever childish promises they made before that, Noctis had forgotten them. But Ignis clung to them like a lifeline, it was what made him come back every time rather than his oaths. Noctis had considered that ‘always’ permanent; because Ignis always kept true to it.

Even if they had to marry different people, as Noctis had said before they left the crown city, they would always stay together. And Ignis had said that he would be there whenever Noctis needed him.

Always.

Aranea’s landing was perfect. The outpost was completely ruined, a far cry from the place they had pulled into after the fall of Insomnia as they chased after Cor and were to meet Monica somewhere here. The Commodore waved, switched on the lights to make certain no Daemons would attack her while she was out.

But something about the atmosphere in this place was strange. It felt devoid of life, and Noctis retread that path that had led him to his first two royal arms. He could hear Cor’s words in the tomb all over again, could see the Marshal judging their battle techniques as they attacked the few patrols around the former settlement of Keycatrich. He could hear Ignis mentioning that Weskham was from here and Cor saying that the settlement had been levelled and Weskham had chosen Altissia as his new home afterwards, could see Prompto’s hands shaking because he was the most inexperienced one of them all but Cor positively reinforcing that he was doing just fine. He could almost see Ignis and him running in side by side, could see that silly little thing they did where they swapped their lances before attacking.

Once upon a time this place had all but blistered under the harsh Lucian sun. Like most parts of Leide it had been a dry heat as opposed to the coast and Insomnia’s humid temperatures in summer, almost pleasant compared to the hellscape that was Duscae in summer. Whoever had forgotten their Coeurl pet in this region deserved an ass kicking, Prompto wheezed as they dragged Gladio away; the Shield had taken a particularly unpleasant shock and fallen unconscious. He could hear the way Ignis started laughing loudly with dirt smudged across his face when Noctis complained about Gladio being the one sleeping on the job instead of him this time.

They had just lost their homes, their families. All they had had left at that time had been each other, and it had strengthened the bonds between them. It made them more careful in the first few days after Insomnia had fallen; it had made Ignis less cold in general as he started tending to everyone’s wounds. Still, he remained the gentlest with Noctis. No matter how close they all were, Ignis and Noctis had spent so much time with each other that there was a quiet understanding between the two of them. They knew what the other needed – sometimes it was space. Sometimes it was a stern talking to. Sometimes it just was Ignis asking if Noctis wanted to go stargazing with him or if he wanted to help make breakfast the next morning.

Thus, neither of them really moved when they came to face each other in front of the Statue of the Mystic.

Were the wind still blowing, Noctis was rather certain that a dramatic gust would have gone through what remained of Keycatrich. If the weather changed, perhaps it would have been raining. But it as dark, the air was still, and somewhere in the very distance he could hear a pack of corrupted and infected Voreteeth howl as they likely chased something that had avoided falling prey to Daemons yet.

Aranea hadn’t been lying about his eyes being eerie. Much like any Daemon’s eyes there was a strange glow to them, but they weren’t vacant. They were _feverish._ That was an important distinction as Noctis and Ignis stood there staring at each other. Perhaps he was imagining that shudder that went through Ignis’ body as he stood there.

Then, after what felt like an eternity, Noctis exhaled slowly.

“So you followed Aranea’s challenge?”

“...”

Ignis looked like he had been to hell and back. He likely had, and now he was sick on top of it. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, his hair was a downright mess to the controlled mess it was whenever he didn’t bother with his usual hairstyle. The most shocking detail perhaps was the scar that split his face; it reminded him of Gladio. Except that Ignis hadn’t received that while protecting Noctis. No, something had happened and unless Ignis started talking about it, he would never know about it. They had always talked about everything, but this right now… wasn’t exactly one of these situations.

They stared at each other until they both raised their weapons at the same time.

Aranea had said that Ignis would likely fight his way out if cornered; that was how Daemons or infected acted. Especially someone who was trying to do something of a sort like Ignis.

“You’re not getting away from me, Iggy.”

“… Do your worst then, Noct.”


	38. Who your heart always belonged to.

Most people who had ever seen them spar described it as a very deliberate dance. Every thrust, every warp, every single step was perfectly orchestrated, based on years upon years of knowing each other. They said it was similar to how King Regis and Clarus Amicitia operated, something a little _too deep_ for king and servant. Whatever unspoken of history existed between the 113 th king and his Shield completely notwithstanding, Noctis and Ignis on the training grounds was something that quite a few people came to watch, just as they watched the spars between the Marshal and the next Shield Gladiolus. It was the knowledge how the other operated that made their escapes even as children easier than it should have been.

Ignis knew at which times Noctis would stumble and yawn due to his perpetual exhaustion. Noctis in turn always knew when Ignis was thinking too much about things so he overlooked the simplest solution to the issue. It was a dance they had danced since forever, _always_ perhaps.

They both knew that a fight like this would not come to a conclusion unless one of them had learned how to play extremely dirty in the last six years.

Ignis had.

But he also knew that he couldn’t. Even just the _thought_ of that sent a shiver through his body as he stared at Noctis for the first time in years.

“So you followed Aranea’s challenge?”

Noctis’ voice sounded… odd. It likely had to do with the growth he had made as king of a fallen country while Ignis had been away chasing phantasms and slowly but steadily losing his mind.

“...”

It was rather sickening. He looked at this man who wore his crown with a certain pride to it, but all he could think of was the time he wasted trying to save him to no avail. It made his insides revolt, made him want to break down right there and start screaming at the gods and at Noctis, at Ardyn and his entire bloodline, at himself first and foremost. All this time, and nothing had changed. Noctis was going to die just as Ignis was going to at this point, and he felt his insides constrict in a way that had long since become familiar to him. He was not going to keel over in front of Noctis like that. Not like that.

The king’s survival had become his mad mantra, and now said survival balanced on Ignis keeping his mind together for long enough to get away without _hurting_ him. Physically.

He sincerely doubted that Noctis would retreat. No matter how much he begged to be let go, there was no way in hell he would get away without a fight. Aranea had laid her trap rather intelligently, and Ignis had to admit that he had been too blinded by his own desire to fight Aranea fair and square. The trap was rather obvious; why else would she ask to meet him somewhere far away enough from Insomnia that he would have no way of calling the Accursed for help or any of the city-bound Daemons that were strong enough to overpower her just in case Ignis got desperate enough to call upon them?

He and Noctis raised their weapons at the same time. If this hadn’t confirmed his fears of not getting away without fighting Noctis one on one, he would have started laughing.

“You’re not getting away from me,” the king said with his voice ringing clearly through the stagnant air of what had been the city of Keycatrich once, “Iggy.”

Now that was a name he hadn’t heard in ages. “… Do your worst then,” he considered calling him by his full name right there but eventually settled for, “Noct.”

Iggy and Noct were the children who got between everyone’s legs in the Citadel. Iggy and Noct sneaked out of the Citadel to get into trouble and had the Crownsguard looking for them. Iggy and Noct were the traumatised child in a wheelchair and the fretting child who wasn’t entirely sure what to do with that situation because his friend needed him but he didn’t understand _what_ he needed. They were the pair that still got into trouble, but instead of barely contained giggles between the two of them as Iggy took the blame it was Iggy standing perfectly straight with his head held high and a hard gaze on his still way too soft face as he said that everything had been his idea when everyone knew it was Noct’s. They were the teenagers who danced around each other’s feeling, a perfectly choreographed waltz that could have continued for all eternity in the apartment, in the Citadel, in the training rooms as far as Iggy was concerned; but it didn’t because it was Noct who decided that propriety was not his strong suit. It were Iggy and Noct who talked about in hushed whispers, who stole kisses in the dark, who spent entire afternoons just lazily leaning against each other and letting some sort of nonsensical sitcom play in the background as they just enjoyed being able to do this together. Noct who was furious that he was betrothed to someone else against his will for terms of peace that everyone doubted; Iggy who just was thankful that for a while he was able to live the dream of the prince rewriting every rule so they could get married in a few years.

Ignis and Noctis on the other hand were the Chosen King of Light and the Accursed’s apprentice. The man who had made Lestallum into the City of Light and who would die for the world, and the man who had abandoned king, country, duty and had forsaken himself.

Despite all that, their past hung between them like a guillotine about to descend upon them. Their weapons were drawn, their expressions were grim, but Ignis immediately noticed that Noctis, too, was thinking about the time they shared together. They had been together longer than they had been apart; there was no way they could just blindly start attacking one another. Ignis wasn’t going to make the first move here. Yes, he wanted to get away. More than anything else – he wanted to get away so bad it made his fever spike in ways that would have worried him were he on his own. But he wasn’t going to waltz through Noctis unless he made the first move.

But Noctis, no matter how much time passed, always remained the same. He could resign to fate, could become the world’s most cruel tyrant, but he would always remain the same when it came to battles. Always the first to jump in unless someone put a hand on his shoulder, grabbed him by the arm.

Something was making Noctis hesitate right now, however. He held that weapon like a lifeline, and the longer Ignis stared at it the more he started to realise that this was the sword that Ravus had carried. This was… hilarious.

The Trident of the Oracle, the ancient heirloom of the Fleuret family, the weapon that had become a part of the Lucis Caelum’s royal weaponry when it passed to the hands of the king they called Oracle after the Fleuret woman’s death. Alba Leonis, forged in the Niflheim Empire by the people who had been so close to bringing ruin to the world before the Accursed ever could, bestowed upon the late Oracle’s firstborn for his achievements in the army, a reminder that his royal blood meant nothing under Emperor Aldercapt and that he was no better than any other people who were given a weapon like this. Now those two weapons that had belonged to a pair of siblings were brought into battle by a pair of…

Former lovers.

A laugh bubbled up, escaped his lips and a moment later he had his free hand raised to his face. Put it on his forehead as he continued laughing for a while – truth be told, it was exactly the mixture of laughter and bitter sobs that it sounded like. “So we both stand here, weapons raised and unable to move anyway, don’t we?”

Noctis shuddered slightly but said nothing. His expression was a grimace, likely because that sound Ignis had been making was pathetic. He was fully aware of that, he was aware of quite a lot of things that might be going through Noctis’ head right now.

“Now then, _Noct,_ how about we get this over with?” Every single word hurt to say, made him wish the earth would split open and swallow him up, made him wish he had died on the Rock of Ravatogh, or after Ravus nearly gutted him. “Stand aside and let me go.”

He so very desperately wanted Noctis to start yelling that he should listen to himself. Wanted the King of Light to do anything at all other than stare at him with those infuriatingly sad eyes that he missed so much just looking at them made him want to hiss and retreat into a crevice. His emotions were so damn conflicting – and that was something he was also aware of. They had been conflicting to begin with, but his infection was likely amplifying them right now. He had no idea how far the Scourge had advanced at this point. Had nothing to compare his stage to except for that time he met his mother; and despite all, Ignis was not a babbling case of insanity.

He thought.

But Noctis took a deep breath instead of starting to yell. “Ignis. _Ignis._ You know I can’t.”

“What,” he said and dropped his hand, “are you going to do? String up the murderer for treason?”

That at least made him cringe. Maybe if he continued that Noctis would let him go.

But all his best friend, the one he loved more than life itself, did was fasten his grip on the sword he carried with him. Then Ignis saw the familiar flash of Noctis retrieving something from the Armiger; perfect crystalline blue. The sound of glass shattering that was so familiar to him that he almost wished he could do the same.

Noctis looked at what he summoned for a second and then tossed it into Ignis’ direction. It was rather clear that he had angled it that way for a reason, and the single dagger buried itself into the dead earth in front of Ignis.

It was his own dagger, the one he had let go of once it was stuck in Ravus’ throat when Ardyn dove in to drag him away before any of the people from Lestallum came by. A weapon forged in Insomnia, and even though he did not bend down to pick it up, he could see that it was in perfect shape. Just the way he had always kept it; likely even polished as he was liable to do when there was nothing to do at camp. He looked back up and saw how Noctis’ expression went from a grimace to something so sad that it felt like a punch in the face.

That was an expression he hadn’t seen since the days of Noctis being bound to a wheelchair; whenever he broke out of his traumatised silence and said something he had an expression like that. Ignis felt like he’d been thrown into cold water.

“I was going to ask the murderer for his reasons and then _help him._ Because every case of treachery has a reason behind it.”

“Your altruism will be the death of you.” Quite literally so. “You would extend a hand to the traitor?”

“My father would have done the same.”

Ignis barked out a laugh. “That is _precisely_ what killed him in the end.”

“Ignis!”

“You know who was the one who ended his life? Aldercapt, Izunia, you’d say. Glauca, since he was found dead beside Nyx Ulric. Glauca it was, yes, but who was the man behind that mask? Can you guess? The selfsame man killed Clarus Amicitia and my uncle.”

Noctis stood there with that sad expression on his face, and Ignis decided to snatch the dagger up. Twirled it around in his free hand before he chucked it back towards Noctis. Just like before it buried itself into the ground a few inches away from the other’s feet, and Ignis laughed.

“Titus Drautos.”

“… _What.”_

Iggy and Noct were the children who got on everyone’s nerves with their escapades; it was usually one Titus Drautos who caught them with a sour expression on his face. He never gave them a scolding because, as he said, that was the king’s duty, perhaps the Shield’s, but he usually caught them. Always brought them home unharmed.

Ignis knew that this was a facade he kept up for years, and now Noctis had to face that truth as well.

“Have I ever lied _to you?”_

Ignis had lied. Hundreds upon thousands of times, without blinking, without turning red. He lied faster than most other people, knew when to sprinkle the lies with half-truths and when to stop lying entirely. But he had never lied to Noctis, not once in his life. He always caved when it came to his well-being; something he considered a small loss in the greater design of things, something that Noctis violently disagreed with.

Why, then, did Noctis cringe when he said that?

He needed to goad Noctis into attacking him. A step forwards did not make Noctis budge the slightest. Raising the Trident of the Oracle – which twanged softly, a sound he had never hear it make before – also did nothing except that Noctis raised Alba Leonis back at him.

The twanging continued; perhaps it was linked to the fact that it was a royal arm and not meant to be in the hands of someone who had killed someone for the Fleuret bloodline. That made perhaps the most sense out of all possibilities.

Then he felt it.

Something moved nearby, just beyond the statue of the Mystic that he had pointedly ignored. More things moved, from the entrance to the trench where another royal arm had rested, moved from beyond the imperials base that lay abandoned in the darkness. Moved all around him. Like a sick reminder which side of the conflict he was on – and then panic surged through his veins.

Daemons.

They had all hidden away, but something about Noctis was likely so enticing that they crawled out of their holes now. Ignis was a Scourge-infected human who would die before long, but Noctis was immune to the Scourge at large and therefore something that they needed to kill for their master. He looked around and caught their eyes glowing in the dark.

This was going to be a problem. Despite everything, he did not want to injure Noctis unless strictly necessary. But Daemons did not care about that. Keeping them in check however meant that he would have to dedicate a significant amount of power to that, power that he could be using to escape instead.

Time crawled to a slowdown when he realised what he was actually thinking. He was considering letting these creatures attack Noctis just so he could make his escape. There was no doubt Noctis could handle them, but he was on his own and, by the gods, there were some terrifying things in this mix. Necromancers, Mindflayers, hells there was even something that might have been Emperor Aldercapt in another life.

What the hell was wrong with him? The Scourge, of course – but there was no way in hell he would let these things attack Noctis.

Unfortunately aforementioned Chosen could feel when Ignis applied the pressure to keep the Daemons at bay. He snatched the dagger from in front of him and tossed it again.

This time Noctis followed with a warp.

* * *

Whoever had taught Noctis in the last six years had done an excellent job at it. He called upon his weapons with an ease that he had never really displayed. The Armiger had always been something he hadn’t really enjoyed despite the almost unfair advantage it gave him in general fights. He could only call upon a limited number of weapons that he stored in it, usually those that were the easiest to grab and he often shuffled those around depending on the fight they were going to have.

Now he changed to a wide array that Ignis had never seen before – royal arms mixed together with weapons forged in the dark, meant to harm Daemons. Either of these choices were horrible as he dodged and parried, because he could feel the sizzling powers emanating off them. The Trident of the Oracle also sung whenever it hit a royal arm; it was a weapon with the mind of an Oracle, perhaps even the Lucian king they called Oracle. He caught a glimpse of what he assumed was the Sigil that the selfsame king had given to Ravus, that had now passed into Noctis’ possession.

Hells, Noctis even sometimes tossed the sword and called upon two different weapons at the same time for a strike of some sort.

Despite all that, it was clear that he was not trying to harm Ignis, just as he himself was holding back.

Suddenly all that training that Ardyn made him go through made sense. All those times the man had suddenly switched weapons, had gone for a dirty trick or three that seemed to completely disobey the laws of anything possible. He had been a master of the same magic that Noctis used once and effectively taught Ignis how to react to all this. He had been so certain that he could overpower Ignis, and he had been right. That man was on a completely different level.

Only one step away from complete control over time.

Ignis coughed and sent a volley of smaller fireballs into Noctis’ direction when he got away from him for a moment. Noctis retaliated with a flask he called forth so fast that Ignis nearly missed it. A moment later the temperature dropped rapidly, and the fire fizzled out against the sheer cold.

He hadn’t been that skilled with Elemancy in Altissia.

Six years were a long, long time. He choked back a scream of frustration – he wasn’t frustrated that this fight was getting him nowhere, he was frustrated that everything had gone so wrong that they were at this point. He had so desperately wanted to wrap it up quickly, wanted to leave Insomnia for Lestallum with a plan of how to save Noctis from his fate. He had managed _nothing_ and instead had been one of the driving reasons for Cor’s death. Had been the one who had killed Ravus, had killed that Niff who had bettered himself if he was friends with Prompto and Cindy. All those refugees that never reached Lestallum because he sent Daemons at them – and Prompto, of course.

Ignis had lost his humanity, and was painfully aware of it. Noctis meanwhile had gained something other than strength. An appreciation for life in general.

Noctis tried to warp past him. Ignis reached into the pathway to grab him by the arm.

He heard the surprised yelp of someone whose warp was interrupted, and Noctis violently jerked in his grip.

“You still make the same mistakes.”

But Noctis didn’t say anything and instead used his weight to free himself. They were mere inches apart when Noctis landed on his feet, and all the Chosen did was put a hand on the former advisor’s cheek. For a terrifying second Ignis’ entire resolve wavered as he was very tempted to close his eyes.

But instead he jumped backwards.

“You still make the same mistakes, too,” Noctis said. “You shouldn’t be going easy on me.”

That knocked the wind out of him. He had been feeling oddly breathless for a while, but now a cough escaped him as he stared at Noctis. Goodness, it took him a lot of willpower to not give into the urge of continuing that cough until he doubled over and hacked his lungs out once more.

Noctis even went as far as lowering his weapon once he saw that Ignis’ focus had gone out the window.

If there was even a shred of the Mystic left in this statue just as Ardyn had forced part of it back into the one that was part of the Old Wall, he didn’t let it show. The only witnesses to this fight were the Daemons – the Daemons that were very displeased with Ignis claiming this fight for himself. It was harder than anticipated to keep these things under control; it was like trying to force his will on a Red Giant all over again. It made him miserable, robbed him of his breath more than fighting Noctis did.

Because in the end, Noctis was someone he was used to, even if they had been six years apart.

* * *

Ignis sidestepped the next warp. All of this warping wasn’t normal, and Noctis should be nearing stasis. He looked for the signs of that, and found them nearly immediately – the king’s face was flushed, his eyes were strangely unfocused as he turned back around to face Ignis.

He himself was barely capable of standing straight up at this point. It had been two hours at best. He’d spent most of that time trying to get past Noctis, but just as Ignis managed to break through every warp that Noctis attempted to get behind his opponent, Noctis immediately blocked his escape. There were only minor cuts and bruises on them; Noctis’ hunter attire had lost a sleeve and Ignis’ old scar from the Deathclaw had reopened, but there was nothing debilitating.

Nothing except for that pesky shortness of breath. After that sidestep the entire world went out of focus for a second, and he felt like a drowning man. The Daemons nearby howled and both he and Noctis looked around. At least that gave him a moment to catch his breath, make the world shift back into focus. The Ring of the Lucii in his pockets felt like the weight of the world right now; the last thing between one death that would save this blighted earth.

“Hey, Ignis?”

They could’ve lived a hundred years apart, and Noctis would still sound like that. Like he was just going to ask if there were any vegetables in that meal he was making, or if they were about to plan their daring escape from the Citadel to get that fast food Noctis was craving. It made his already barely existing resolve waver even more.

“This is getting us nowhere fast. How about this: You tell me what the fuck it is you’re trying to do, and I’ll… I guess,” that change in expression wasn’t even slight; he went from exhausted to utterly emotionally crushed, “I’ll… let you go.”

Ignis lowered the Trident of the Oracle and Noctis dismissed every weapon he had scattered around the battlefield safe for the dagger he considered a memento of his old life and the sword Ravus had carried. The dagger remained stuck halfway between them, the physical divide.

“And what if I don’t, Noct? What will you do then?” No reply, and Ignis coughed a little before continuing. That pressure on his chest was awful. “Will you knock me out and drag me back, like Cindy said they would? Will you decide to play benevolent benefactor and send me to the afterlife with parts of my dignity intact, as Ravus claimed before we started fighting in earnest? Will you tell me to go home, come back, like Cor and Iris did before I lost control over the situation and fled?”

The Chosen shook his head. “Please. Just… just tell me. Like you always did.”

“This isn’t me reading you a book at night, Noct.”

“Stop it! Stop it, Ignis! I know you’re trying to push me away – but I want to know _why!”_

He couldn’t. He just couldn’t tell Noctis that this was all because King Regis and everyone else had failed to mention one particular little detail about the prophecy that had so burdened Noctis since the time he came back from Tenebrae. A fate that couldn’t be changed as long as the gods were left in charge, as long as no one tried it.

But then again, Ignis had tried. For six lousy years he had tried to find a solution, and the only progress he had ever made had been the Pitioss Ruins; a solution that simply couldn’t be any longer because Ravus Nox Fleuret, the only possible user of what these voices called luminous magic was dead. Dead at Ignis’ hands, no less. Six lousy, lousy years beside Ardyn Izunia, with strange truths that gave no context, stranger stories of a past long forgotten and nothing. Nothing to show for it, nothing.

Nothing.

And all of a sudden, all tension he had managed to build up, every oh-so-determined thought of pushing Noctis aside came crashing down, and the guilt came back with a vengeance. He had done everything wrong, from the moment he had decided to get to the Altar of the Tidemother by himself, from the moment he accepted Ardyn’s absolutely insane proposal, to the very second he bent his knee in front of that man to get some time to think, some insight on the mystery from another time that was Ardyn Izunia and his role as the Accursed.

“Because… because...”

He could start reciting the Cosmogony here. Could recite the papers that noted his progress on what a future ruler of the country should have learned. But either choice only brought up Cor’s face as Ignis furiously asked if he had known. That split second of utter, devastating regret. The silence of King Regis, the silence of Lunafreya. Gods above, all these people were dead, _dead_ , and Ignis had killed quite a few others.

When had Noctis’ survival turned into a mad mantra like this? It couldn’t just have been because of the prophecy. He had willingly walked into the arms of Ardyn because it meant that Noctis would have time to recover not long after learning that Noctis would have to die. Earlier, then. Sometime during their travels? No, even then Ignis had always made certain that as little harm as possible befell Noctis. The rest of the group too, of course.

A shy smile that turned bright as they shook hands. The selfsame smile missing entirely. Then back again. Then the room, the apartment, everything.

“They lied. They all lied to us.”

“Who did?”

The Trident of the Oracle hit the ground as Ignis raised his hands to his face and sunk to his knees. “King Regis. Lord Clarus. _Cor._ My uncle, no, the entire council, the entire thrice damned _Citadel_. Lady Lunafreya, Ravus, even their late mother. The gods. The _universe.”_

Noctis took a few steps forwards, his hands still on the weapon but his expression one of concern and confusion. “Lied about what, Ignis?”

A king on his throne. Dead on his throne. An entire bloodline ended because the gods had proven themselves incapable of helping their actual chosen along. And now they had to sacrifice some for the slaughter; first the Oracle and then the Chosen King she would be dying for. After everything that had happened – Daemons, fire, Niflheim, all those petty attempts on his life; in the end Noctis would die. And not a single person ever told him. Not a single person ever told Ignis. So they had spent their time idly promising things when they could have worked against this fate all along.

He dropped his hands. Let them hit the ground when Noctis stopped again.

“Do you,” he began slowly, trying to fight back the urge to claw his own face open, “remember how you said you would… when the war ended… how you would just… get that ‘Chosen’ business over and done with, and then we’d… ah...”

He nodded slowly, and Ignis lowered his head.

“Many sacrificed all for the king – so the king must sacrifice all in return.” It weren’t exactly the words he had heard in that vision Lunafreya had forwarded through Pryna, but they were approximate enough to get the meaning across. “Noctis. … _Noct._ Oh, Noct. You’ll die. You’ll _die_ , and the sun will rise. That’s what the Chosen has to do.”

Alba Leonis clattered on the ground. “I… what?”

“So I thought. Too much, as usual. But I thought – perhaps, just perhaps… I could find a way to… fulfill the conditions of the prophecy without having to have you die for it. The Accursed had to have a weak point.”

“… You tried to find it by staying close to him.”

“But I found nothing. _Nothing!”_

Instead he had found that as long as the end result was what he desired, he was willing to do nearly anything. He drew the line at killing people he knew.

An inhibition that the subsequent infection had completely done away with. He had killed Ravus. Had been fully willing to kill Prompto. Hadn’t even considered the people fleeing towards Lestallum people.

Some people turned into serial killers when infected, he heard Ardyn say. And Ignis was one of them. Perhaps not as gruesome, but just as horrible. Those people were survivors like he was, and he had ruined that like an animal on the hunt.

That dull pressure on his upper body was almost unbearable. He wheezed, half-choked as he did that.

“Ignis...”

Another step forwards. Noctis was slowly approaching, but every step made Ignis so painfully aware that he had become a monster while Noctis remained the human sacrifice. He’d thrown away his morals, his upbringing, had nearly completely discarded his love for Noctis for… nothing. It had all been for nothing.

Noctis stopped in front of him, got on his knees.

All.

For.

_Nothing._

Ignis flinched when Noctis put his hands on the advisor’s cheeks. They were cold as ice – or maybe he was just burning up. The Daemons nearby howled because his pressure on them faded a little as he blinked at the King of Lucis; his sight was blurry. Just as blurry as it had been without his glasses prior to his infection, as blurry as it had always been when Noctis snatched his glasses when they were younger to run around with them laughing as Ignis chased after him.

“I get it.” Seeing Noctis with tears running down his face as he forced a smile was just the final nail in the coffin. “I understand why you did all this.”

What Noctis didn’t say was the rather obvious fact that it didn’t excuse his actions. Were he to return to Lestallum now he would be tried for treason and murder. Though Lucis was not a country that had the death penalty, perhaps it was different now that so many countries united in Lestallum. The Niffs would cry for his blood at the very least, and the Tenebraens likely as well.

It was like everything around him shattered.

He’d lost that game he tried to play. He could admit that now. He’d gone too close to the abyss, and had fallen in. There was no way out; he didn’t deserve a way out even if there were one. Just having Noctis here was almost too much as he started to sob. He felt his own powers fizzle out like a flame.

The Daemons howled and broke whatever spell Noctis had managed to put on him. Suddenly the hands were too cold, his chest hurt too much. Ignis scrambled away as if he had been hit, just in time before his body decided it was time for another one of these horrible coughing spells. It was rather similar to the one that had knocked him out; though this time the pain didn’t eventually dull his senses.

It felt like every nerve in his body had caught on fire.

He barely heard Noctis get back to his feet, barely even realised that the Chosen was saying something. That accursed Ring of the Lucii in his pockets felt like it was burning through his skin. He needed to get it away from him, far, far away. Maybe it’d stop hurting.

He wiped his face with one and reached into the pocket with the other. Stood up even though his legs were about to give in; he finally realised that Noctis was standing as well. Gods, his sight was blurry. Everything sounded so distant, he couldn’t make those words out at all.

Then, all of a sudden, it snapped back.

“… waiting back at the outpost, but… Ignis?”

Suddenly hearing and seeing again was so disorienting that he stumbled backwards some more, stumbled over his own feet and crashed onto his back. Steps; Noctis came running over.

Disorientation.

An extreme fever spike.

Coughing blood.

Shortness of breath.

Light sensitivity.

Both Ravus’ and Ardyn’s voices mixed together in the back of his head as they talked about symptoms, a godawful noise that made him all too aware of his surroundings. The dark sky and the world around him turned, even as Noctis gathered him up in his arms.

He coughed weakly.

“Fucking hell man, you’re burning up!”

Ignis only mumbled something, the Ring of the Lucii in his hand feeling like an ice cube that refused to melt.

“Shit, shit, Aranea wasn’t joking when she said you were an advanced case…”

He blinked slowly. “Showing… compassion to your enemies will only make you seem weak, Noct.”

“Enemies, my fucking ass!” Noctis was staring at him with wide eyes; wide eyes that were even bluer than Ignis remembered them being. “Yeah, it’s true. You did awful things – gods, Ignis, you’re probably the second-worst person right after Ardyn alive right now by actions alone. But you’re still _Ignis._ ”

The advisor-to-be to the future King Noctis Lucis Caelum CXIV; formerly known as the kid who sneaked out of the Citadel with the prince on his heels for something as mundane as visiting a museum or seeing an actual Chocobo because there was going to be the yearly Insomnia Chocobo Crossing race. The man who had sworn his life to the prince and lost his heart in addition. The same guy who had nearly broken into tears the first time he woke up next to Noctis, the same guy who broke into tears in his room after the terms of the peace were forwarded to him and the prince.

“Sure, you’re my enemy. Let’s go with that. But I can’t just… _fuck man,_ you feel like you’re about to go up in flames!”

Truth be told, his entire body had started feeling strangely non-existent the second he had gone down. The fact that he still had the power to keep the ring in his palm was amazing. Nothing moved unless he really willed it to, and even just turning his face slightly to look at Noctis took a herculean effort. Suddenly the sluggish movements and the fact that she had nearly broken his entire ribcage made sense; his mother had been in that same stage.

He’d always known there was no turning back from this unless he died or Noctis died to purge the world.

“Noct. Noct, I think I… I _know_ I lost that game I tried to play. Outwitted. Checkmate.” Not by Ardyn, heavens, he had not been outwitted by Ardyn. In the end it had been the gods he had tried to play against by siding with the Accursed with the Ring of the Lucii in his pockets. In the end it hadn’t been the Glacian’s attempt on his life that would return history to its rightful course.

It had been the Infernian. Out of all possible gods, it was the one who had lost, whose only place in this story was to test the Chosen. Time, the thing that Ignis needed to undo the source, was what he eventually lacked. This had to be one of the most ironic things that had ever happened to him, but he couldn’t even laugh.

Not when Noctis was still staring at him with wide eyes like this.

“Compassion isn’t a weakness, Ignis.”

“… You’re right,” he whispered, a hoarse sound that nearly drowned in the noise that rose all of a sudden, “of course you’re right.”

“Aren’t I always when it comes to these matters?”

Ignis closed his eyes and focused. Those Daemons finally shut up properly, but in return it felt like pure acid went through every vein and every nerve; his numb and limp body seized up a second and then went limp again.

“You are. Because you were raised to be… human. I wasn’t. I was to be a… replacement king.”

“And just like my father, you lost the game you were playing.”

He slowly raised the hand that was not holding the Ring of the Lucii like a lifeline. Reached for his necklace and slowly removed it. It was harder than anticipated, and only doing it with one hand was less than ideal. This was where he had put what the hunters called a Sigil of the Lucii, and he handed it to Noctis.

“Sigil of the Father,” was all he said before he had to reapply magical pressure. These things were extremely riled up and he had no idea why.

Noctis tried to hand it back, but Ignis shook his head.

“Iggy. C’mon man. Let’s just… Aranea’s waiting at the outpost. Can you stand? You can--”

“No.”

“Ignis.”

“I can’t. You said you’d… let me go if I told you.”

And thus he started, slowly. Told Noctis what he had learned, every bit and every piece he remembered. All those vague things that Ardyn had mentioned about the gods and the prophecy, how it wasn’t a lie that they were related. How he had acted half knowing what he was doing when he killed Loqi and Ravus; how Cor had died in the end because he had not been able to tell the Accursed off. Even the ruins he mentioned. Every bit, very abridged. From how he challenged the Blademaster to how he came to control Daemons. From the moment he came across Ravus in Altissia. How they crossed the city just as Ravus had likely told Noctis; how Ignis stopped when they arrived at the Altar of the Tidemother. How Ravus ran ahead and thus missed Pryna, how something had nearly made gotten him to his knees. A vision of what was to come. How they fought, how Ardyn entered. How he reached the Crystal in Gralea, and how his choices were three extremes – one, he gave in and let Ardyn kill him because no mortal like Ignis could defeat someone with what looked like an Armiger at his disposal; two, he bent his knee just as he had done.

“Three...”

He raised his other hand which was still curled into a fist. Put it against the hand that Noctis had on his cheek at this point, icy cold and so very, very disturbingly familiar. Noctis removed it and opened it.

He dropped the Ring of the Lucii – and Noctis let out a startled gasp.

“Option three… was to… attack him using this.” Noctis and Ignis both knew that anyone not of Lucian royal blood died for their attempts to wear the ring. “I shouldn’t have… taken it at all. It was never _my_ decision to make. It was… ever the gods’.”

“Ignis… Iggy, stay with me. Was it with you all along?”

“Snatched it from the Altar of the… Tidemother. That’s the last… puzzle piece you were missing.”

His energy left him when he exhaled slowly. He hadn’t expected this to be such a numbing affair. Then again, giving up felt like this. Numbing. Cold like Noctis’ hands.

He had his eyes closed until he felt something surprisingly cool that wasn’t a hand. When he opened his eyes everything was blurry again, but it was very clear that Noctis was crying.

“You did… you did all of this because of the prophecy?”

“Mhm.”

“Iggy… gods, you _idiot._ You could’ve just… said something! Anything! We could have figured a solution out together!”

He shook his head and said that his ability to return to Lestallum had been voided the second he chose to attack Iris. Long before Cor even died because he had been duelling him and Ardyn then used that to deliver a heavy blow against the foundation that Noctis and the others had built in that city. He’d willingly attacked someone he knew, which made him a danger to society. Even if it had been a farce, the second he got sick meant that he would wind up in the same situation as his mother.

“Come on, stay with me here! Ignis. No, don’t close your eyes! Ignis! I’ll get you to Aranea, we can get you--”

He jerked upwards with a scream when his entire body went from numb to white-hot agony. Writhed as he sunk backwards into Noctis’ lap and clutched his chest. Breathing was almost impossible at this point; his lungs felt like they were filled with some sort of liquid, as if he were a man drowning. A man drowning in fire.

“No. Said you’d let me go.”

“Like hell I will!”

“Can’t save me.”

“I can try!”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“You’re the one being ridiculous! Come _home_ with me. Sure, we can put you on trial, but you’ll--”

“Noct. It’s too late for me.”

“Then at least come back to Aranea with me!”

“Won’t make it.”

Noctis started shaking him gently. “You will! You just have to hold on long enough!”

“Shouldn’t be dragging… a late stage… infected to Lestallum. Besides.”

He released a little magical pressure. All of a sudden a howl rose around them that drowned out even Noctis’ sobs until he barely managed to apply pressure again. They fell silent, but now there were eyes watching them from all around.

He let out a howl himself as another seizure went through his body, and he rolled away from Noctis.

“Can’t… keep up magic pressure to keep them away… if I have to walk. Meaning they’ll kill us both. Survival rate 0%. Once I’m dead… no magic pressure while you drag my corpse along. Meaning they’ll kill us both, survival rate 0%.” Finally he was crying as well. This time he was rather certain that it wasn’t because of stress, or because he was in pain. “Leave me here. Grab the Trident of the Oracle. Return to Aranea. _Forget about me._ You’ll live. I’ll die either way.”

“I--”

“… said you’d let me go if I told you everything. So leave me here. _Go.”_

That was perhaps worse than the horrible pain that seared through his entire body. The way Noctis shook his head defiantly as he held the Ring of the Lucii and the necklace with the sigil on it in the same hand. But Ignis couldn’t do anything, couldn’t say anything because another jolt went through his body and made his vision black out entirely for a second. He wasn’t even sure if he was just groaning or almost on the verge of shrieking because it hurt so bad, but the fact that Noctis still didn’t get up to run away was worse. Way worse.

“… Please. Noct, please. Go. Run.”

The Daemons were moving. His grip on his own power was fading fast, and Noctis still shook his head with undignified sobs escaping him. Ignis wanted to get up so bad, but he couldn’t stand. Couldn’t move a muscle – and he was rather certain that if he could, he’d be attacking Noctis. Thus he continued lying there on his stomach.

After what felt like an agonising eternity, Ignis let out a wheeze.

“What good will it do if you stay here with me and let these… things… or me… tear you apart? There’s still people who count on you.” That at least made Noctis stop crying audibly. “Try finishing what I started. Try defying fate. Accept it if you must. But go. Those people need you more than… a single fool who tried he could do everything on his own.”

“Ignis...”

“The thought of… losing you… made me lose my mind. You mean… the world to me. More than the world. Always did. So please. Noct. Noct, at least… let me die knowing you’re _alive_.”

In truth he didn’t want to die without him. He wanted to be beside him until the end, or at least die in his arms. This seemed a fitting end for someone who had messed up beyond salvation, to die alone in a field _begging_ the gods he had defied that the Chosen would make it back to Lestallum in one piece with the Ring of the Lucii so he could at least do as the prophecy demanded of him. Perhaps everyone would have enough time to think about what to do. But as things stood, Noctis would have to die.

“I’m sorry,” he wasn’t entirely sure if Noctis heard him, “for failing you.”

The only thing he heard for a moment was the scuttling of the nearby Daemons. Though it nearly made him black out entirely he once more increased the pressure – and his body violently revolted against it. He started coughing pathetically, trying to breathe in or out or _anything_ really, but his lungs failed him right there.

Then he heard it.

Steps, very slow. The sound of a weapon bursting into a phantom weapon, the shrill sound of splintering glass. Then more steps.

Noctis stopped beside him, did not bend down to look at him. “Can you just… answer one more question?”

He nodded.

“Would you… do this again?”

Ignis shook his head. No, he wouldn’t. “At least… if the outcome… is the same. But perhaps you cannot… change destiny after all.”

Heavens knew Lunafreya and Ravus tried. But they, too, had bent before the pull of destiny as the might higher than even the Hexatheon demanded; Lunafreya had died at the Altar of the Tidemother, and something told him that unless he managed to change Noctis’ fate, Ravus would have met his end either way. And now Noctis was off to fulfill his part in this pathetic play now that he finally had the Ring of the Lucii again.

“Noct.”

A shudder went through the King of Light, and Ignis finally understood how futile all of this had been. He should have never gone with Ardyn. Should have used the Ring of the Lucii against the Accursed with reckless abandon, not caring about what happened to him. Because in the end Ignis truly did not care about his own life, or the world. As long as Noctis lived.

“I’ll… see you at daybreak,” Ignis closed his eyes and Noctis let out a whimper, “my love.”

With that, the Chosen fled. Sword at his side. Ring in his hands. With him went the hope for a better tomorrow that neither of them would get to see, even though they both so desperately had wanted it all along.

Ignis remained. And with him stayed the guilt, the regret, the empty feeling of having failed completely and utterly.

Losing what remained of his humanity was… right. This was the right ending. This was how it should be.

This was what he deserved for all his failings, all his misguided attempts at telling himself he had not become a monster long before the Scourge had taken root in his veins.

Just too bad that monsters would not wind up in the same place as the King of Light would. He felt his own energy dissipate. Heard the howls of the Daemons that lunged forwards, rushed after Noct. But Ignis remained perfectly still, with his body going numb all over again, his eyes closed and his mind made up. This was the right end. The only right end to this.

 


	39. HOME

He watched the Chosen run.

In the last few hours he had carefully retraced all steps taken to figure out where the Ring of the Lucii had gone. In his glee over having the Chosen’s heart quite literally in his hands, he had completely shoved the possibility that the Ring of the Lucii was with Ignis aside. But once he carefully recreated the actions that led to this point, from the moment Ignis set out from Insomnia with a glum expression to the very point Ardyn approached him and Ravus at the Altar of the Tidemother, he started to realise a few things. Lunafreya had had the ring before she died. The only living people at the Altar of the Tidemother had been Ravus, Ardyn and Ignis – and if Ravus had had the ring, he would have handed it to Noctis. Ignis saying he hadn’t seen it was a simple lie, but one that Ardyn took at face value.

He snapped his fingers to undo the command Ignis had given the Daemons once the Chosen was far enough that he would reach Aranea without getting torn into pieces.

Ardyn meanwhile slowly approached the writhing advisor.

He’d seen many men turn. Ignis’ self-restraint was honestly quite impressive; quite a few people proceeded to gouge their eyes out with their own hands, other otherwise mutilated themselves because it was an agonising process, one that made an entire body feel like it was going up in flames while also breaking apart entirely and reforming into something wrong, along with the mental torture of either knowing that they were turning into a Daemon or being in so much pain that they couldn’t move properly. All Ignis did was roll on the ground a little, letting out a whimper when he felt his magic disperse as it was done away with by Ardyn’s command override.

He brought his foot down on Ignis’ back once he was close enough. That sound the advisor made was pathetic, but all Ardyn did was dig his heel in further.

“Well played.”

“Hff.”

“Alas, your time’s up once more, my boy. This time without anyone offering you a hand that you can bite into, I’m afraid.”

Ardyn Izunia was not a man who admitted that he owed the gods something. But right now he wanted to shake the Infernian’s hand for thoroughly screwing everything up so bad that it corrected the path history took. Somewhere in the distance the Daemons continued howling, though this time there was an undeniable amount of anger in it. Their prey likely escaped into Aranea’s brightly lit airship, was likely telling her to get them back to Lestallum, back to the Crystal. Ignis even had the audacity to smile into the ground and Ardyn stepped down so hard he heard something break.

The advisor said nothing else other than the agonised groan that escaped him.

“Really, that was excellently played. Looking back at it, I almost want to root for you! Not many mortals would go as far as you have, truly. But unfortunately for you, dearest Ignis, it’s curtain call.”

He kicked him in the side and rolled him over. A thin line of blood ran out of Ignis’ eyes and the corner of his mouth, the colour so off that it looked almost Daemonic in nature now. They stared at one another for a few moments, Ignis’ eyes slowly glazing before another seizure made him yelp. Something made a godawful cracking noise.

Ardyn bent down to yank the advisor up. Held him by collar. Ignis’ limbs dangled kind of uselessly, and though his eyes were feverish there was still a surprising amount of resistance in them. Prime material for something rather terrifying, now that Ardyn thought of it.

“Now then,” he nearly purred when Ignis coughed weakly and clearly struggled to keep his composure, “any last words?”

Another spasm went through the man as his expression went from obviously in pain to a small grin that was clearly not amused. He closed his eyes when blood started rolling down his chin and fell on the blighted earth beneath his dangling feet – for a moment, stillness ruled this part of Lucis.

Then his eyes snapped open.

Gone were the eyes Ardyn had gotten used to over the last six years; what had taken their place now was something clearly not human. The grin got wider, until it almost turned face-splitting in how awfully twisted it looked.

“I’ll be waiting for you… in hell, Ardyn,” was the low gurgle that were Ignis Scientia’s last words.

Ardyn dropped him.

He even landed on his feet before collapsing with a scream. He continued screaming as the Accursed walked away – he’d seen enough people turn. He didn’t have to stay around to know that every single bone in Ignis’ body was breaking into pieces, tearing his insides apart and quite literally making him smaller until finally something escaped and reformed properly.

And besides, whatever Daemon came from this mess, eventually it would wind up in Insomnia. None could escape the call of the Accursed, after all.

* * *

The pair of Glaives ducked into a street just a moment too late – he had seen them. For a moment he considered making an example of them for the fools who had made a base of operations out of the last hiding place that humans who hadn’t been able to escape Insomnia before the dark fell and the Daemons moved in, but decided against it. He may have been the Accursed, but Ardyn was not a fan of unnecessary bloodshed in the end; training after which he healed his opponent notwithstanding.

Anyone who didn’t know the Imperial Chancellor Izunia might have thought that he was moping. Quite a few officials in Niflheim always assumed he was moping, but truth be told he was thinking. He thought that perhaps he would feel a change in the atmosphere when the Chosen finally met the Draconian, but so far nothing had happened. The Crystal remained in Lestallum, hidden away from the public eye but definitely pulsing in there. It kept the city safe – all things considered, he was surprised that Noctis had never attempted to recreate the Wall around it.

The Glaives were urgently discussing what to do next. He could hear them whisper as he passed the street they had ducked into.

“Let’s just get back to base.”

“But it’s our home, Garret!”

“Our base is our home too, Cass. C’mon, move it before he sees us!”

Ardyn stopped as those two Glaives fled the scene and went straight for an underground passage on the other street this smaller one connected to.

Home.

They still considered the ruins of an old life _home._ Now that he thought about it, Ignis had only ever called Insomnia by its name and not often his home – as if his home was somewhere else. With someone else.

Ardyn frowned as he continued walking through the desolate streets. He’d never realised just how many Daemons Ignis kept under control – the city was positively abuzz with an energy he hadn’t felt in years. Something dark was crawling through the streets, and this time it wasn’t him.

He stopped in front of the single Cerberus.

It hadn’t struck him so far, but perhaps this was the last one that somehow survived both the Lucians hunting them down and the Niffs trying to take them back. It definitely looked battle-hardened. Which made the fact that Ignis had so casually sent it to sleep all the more impressive.

He mulled over the meaning of home for a while longer as he passed the Cerberus. The Daemon went to roam the streets of the city that used to be so insignificant in the past. Only two thousand years of conquest had made it into the city it was nowadays, something that quite a lot of people considered home.

It was that very home that made so many of the Glaives, most of all their leader Titus Drautos, run into the loving arms of Niflheim. They wanted their hearth and home back, regions that had fallen into the hands of the conquering nation due to their brutal approach. Instead of defending the new home they were offered they accepted what the people who had forced them to leave in the first place had to offer. It was still one of the more baffling aspects of manipulation; while he had been meaning to work out a way to undermine the Kingsglaive to eventually attack Insomnia from within, he had not expected these people to come along so willingly. With the men and women who had orchestrated the war in the first place.

Instead of fleeing into the vast countryside to make it harder for Niflheim to find them, Noctis and his retainers instead attempted to return to Insomnia. They turned back and tried to go _home._ A home in ruins, a home that still smouldered. He had made certain that there wouldn’t be much opposition that would prove to be dangerous to the emotionally distressed Chosen, but Ardyn never figured out why they hadn’t just immediately turned tail and gone into hiding like Cor Leonis had done.

It made him wonder.

Did Daemons have a home?

Some were very definitely drawn to certain places, likely remnants of their sentient existence. If a herd of Garulas turned into Daemons they would continue roaming the same meadows that they previously wandered around in. Some Daemons were drawn to certain towns or other landmarks, a select few were sealed somewhere and showed no sign of wishing to leave these places once the seals were broken. Less informed people might say that these creatures were just trying to return home.

Ardyn knew it was a load of hogwash. Instinct and previous knowledge merely got corrupted; at its very base these creatures only returned to places they knew. There was no emotional attachment to these places, it was pure instinct and nothing else.

It was the sentient ones where things became muddy.

Speaking Daemons often voiced things like the desire to return home, to find someone or something that meant a lot to them and the memory hadn’t completely corroded during their transformation. That these creatures would haunt the places they still had attachments to was no surprise, and that there were hunters specifically taught how to take care of these things.

It made him wonder where he would go if he just let go of that last petty shred of humanity he clung to.

Every settlement he knew had since either been levelled or evolved into a much larger one that he no longer recognised. Every single person he had known was dead and he remembered precisely none of them save for the two who had ruined his life.

Wherever Ardyn Lucis Caelum’s home had been, it did no longer exist.

And Ardyn Izunia had no home.

* * *

He knew something was amiss the moment he saw something standing in the lying in the middle of the road. Whatever it was, it hadn’t been there just hours ago, and the closer he got the worse his sense of dread became. This was familiar, but he couldn’t place how or why it was. Perhaps something similar had happened in the past, something that now was perfectly irrelevant to what the Accursed needed to do.

He put a hand against the boulder and felt a shudder run down his spine. Yes, his body remembered, but his mind did not. He was effectively clueless about what this meant, but he started going down the list of possible things this could mean.

Eventually he reached a point that sent another shudder through his body. He felt a spark of magic that hadn’t been there before, familiar in a strange way that did not bring up the place he definitely remembered this energy from.

Then again, he had not had to fight the Archaean for his support – maybe. Something had taken place, and a boulder like this had been involved once upon a time – perhaps. He did not remember, but this was… strangely familiar. The boulder sparked under his hand, an energy he hadn’t really felt since the days after Lunafreya had awoken the slumbering Archaean but before Noctis finally heeded Titan’s call. It was the thrum of the earth, a heartbeat that was strong despite the fact that everything had gone into a perpetual state of decay. It was a reminder that the earth was strong, would be strong, and that no matter how strong the sickness became, the earth would survive.

“Very funny,” he said, “very funny indeed.”

He didn’t need the reminder. He knew that now history had returned to its proper pace, that now the emergence of Noctis as the true King of Light was only a matter of time. Days, weeks, months – years. It didn’t matter now, because inevitably he would come marching into the city knowing he would have to die. A sacrificial lamb carrying the banner of the gods that had decided his fate before he even went to school.

At least Titan had always been the least vocal of the Six. The one who never talked to him directly, the one who did not haunt him in some way or another. Everyone else’s ire or indifference was justified at this point, but the Archaean rarely interacted with the mortal world. He merely held the meteor, steadfast, reliable – silent.

Ardyn smacked his hand against the boulder and sent a magic shock through it. It cracked, broke apart into pieces, and miasma floated up from it before it burst into glittering particles. He watched them float away; it was amusing that this thing vanished just as the Six did whenever Noctis called upon them.

* * *

A year passed in relative silence. The Glaives got bolder sometimes, but every time they were met with heavy opposition. A few months later he realised that they were better at taking giant ones down, thus going back to a tactic that Niflheim had used during the war – a collective Ahriman flood. Too many of these drove back the Glaives from parts of the city they were not allowed in, and sometimes the Cerberus was enough to act as a deterrent before the flood had to be unleashed.

A new wave of Daemons inevitably moved in, and much to his surprise, some moved out. There was something different now than it had been before.

Watching Lestallum made it rather clear that their spirits were waning. Seven years of darkness, and now the Chosen had vanished. The population knew, of course, but Noctis’ absence and the general gloominess of some of the people who knew what fate awaited the King of Light once he returned dimmed their spirits. It did not dim their light, however. Lestallum expanded further, and after nearly a year of having lost their king and having gotten the confirmation that his advisor was dead, they made a move on Hammerhead. They retook the station, immediately walled it up once they had the lights running. The one who oversaw the restoration of the place was Cindy Aurum, hardened after an incident that had killed one of her constant companions and left the other in a coma for several months. Prompto Argentum had woken to his best friend gone and the other friend dead. Ardyn suspected that Ignis had had a hand in the would-be-MT’s injury – he had not reacted to someone confirming that Ignis was dead.

The fact that Noctis had told everyone that Ignis was dead instead of the truth was pathetic. But there were many things that Ardyn considered pathetic about the Chosen.

He returned to the city quite a few people still considered home but that many only wanted to take back because it was a symbol nowadays. A symbol of peace shattered just as the late Oracle was heralded as angel these days. An angel who had guided her misguided brother back on the right track until he gave his life in service to the King of Light. Quite a few people who had died had become something of an odd myth; tales of the Immortal were being passed around, tales of the 113th King of Lucis and his Shield. All things that sounded more fantastical than what had actually happened.

Ardyn nearly died laughing when he sneaked into Lestallum exactly once. He blended into the crowds in there while in disguise, and overheard someone talk about the Niflheim government. How the actual people had been replaced by Daemons long ago.

As if the war hadn’t started by itself hundreds of years ago. As if Ardyn had killed each and every military leader and replaced them with something horrific that only lived for battle. Feeding an obsession that was already there until it consumed a person whole was easy. Many people did it to themselves, and he had merely accelerated the process. But that was not something that the general public knew. As far as they were concerned, people in that country had been good until something turned them bad – because the Niffs currently in Lestallum were good people, so of course the rest of the country had to be like that as well! As if Lucis and Tenebrae and Accordo were free from their own rotten peaches.

But Ardyn returned to the city that waited for its ruler still. Returned to the utter silence of a fallen country and a fallen kingdom, where only Daemons and the night ruled.

Except that this time it was raining.

He immediately stopped in the middle of the street once he saw another person standing there.

In the dark, it did not rain. Noctis had always called forth Shiva or Leviathan or Ramuh to have them create ice or have them make it rain when a journey to Niflheim simply grab containers full of snow to melt them for fresh water in Lestallum was not viable. The weather never changed, but the second he had stepped into this street it had started raining.

A wind blew through the street, and he saw the person’s dress move before they vanished into a shower of water.

“To think that you are still mad about that. It has been what, nearly one and a half millennia?”

He got no immediate answer. Then the rain stopped, froze mid-air. It reformed into shapes that he had seen during the Trial of the Hydraean in Altissia, spectres that beset the Chosen as he made his way to the Altar of the Tidemother. The last remnant of the temple Ardyn helped sink so many years ago. That was an event he remembered vaguely, and Leviathan’s ire was rightful. Her last priests all drowned, were swallowed up by the deep she commanded and she could do nothing. It wasn’t until Ardyn personally struck down the last priestess to undo the chains that kept the temple afloat that she woke from her slumber for a few moments. A few moments that were more than enough to understand what had happened and who she had to thank for it.

The water spectres, miniature copies of Leviathan herself, all flew towards him. They had their maws open, and Ardyn did not doubt for even a second that these creations, though made of water, could easily tear chunks of flesh out of his body. A lazy flick of the hand, and all of them crashed against a magical wall that shimmered blood red in the darkness of Insomnia.

“But as I learned, for the deathless such a long time feels like barely a day.”

The Hydraean did not answer him. She did speak with humans, yes, but her hatred generally made her remain silent. She never had anything constructive to say; the deep was the most feral of all elements, and he depths of water remained perhaps the scariest thing out there in Eos. Scarier than even the eternal dark.

“What is it that you’re trying to achieve? Intimidate a being without fear, who is resigned to the fate you have decided on for him? It was not me who brought history off its tracks for over half a decade. Had you succeeded in killing him with Omega, where would the Ring of the Lucii have gone? It would have remained here for all eternity. So leave. Go and prepare your Chosen. But this city is not your concern.”

* * *

After a year and a half the most interesting creature he had recently started hearing about arrived in Insomnia.

The Glaives called it ‘Will-o’-the-wisp’ and quite feared it – a Daemon of the Necromancer family that tore through entire buildings whenever it went on a rampage. But it weren’t these rampages that had piqued Ardyn’s interest, it was the fact that allegedly this Daemon avoided conflict as much as possible. It fought like a monster when cornered but otherwise preferred to flee the scene whenever possible.

There were a few choice Daemons that acted similarly. He knew exactly what to do with this one, and proceeded to continue with his business as usual.

Will-o’-the-wisp’s time would come. Eventually. Inevitably.

Just like his time would come.

Two years. Two years, one month, sixteen days, five hours, thirty-three minutes and about ten seconds since the sun had set for the final time and miasma had blotted out the sky.

Somewhere beyond that veil the sun continued shining, trying to break through that horrid layer of sickness. By now the skies showed when the sun was up; everything was lit in a sickly green light when that was the case; though light was perhaps the wrong term for it. It remained dark, oppressively and crushingly so. But those times when the sun was theoretically up and shining were the times when the humans got bolder. Something about their approach to things had changed in the two years since the Chosen had vanished – they got bolder. Hells, even the ones he had considered his closest people, from his own retainers to his father’s former Crownsguard elite and even the enemy’s Commodore got bolder.

Ardyn watched with no small amount of amusement how roughly fifteen people including Aranea Highwind, Prompto Argentum, Cindy Aurum, Iris Amicitia and Gladiolus Amicitia eventually managed cornering the Cerberus. It was a brutal fight, and Prompto nearly lost a leg in the process, but eventually the creature went down with a cry. The earth shook as it did so and then fire burst forth. Iris and the other Glaives just barely managed manifesting a thin magical shield that would have shattered in any other situation – but this were the dying throes of a Cerberus. When it vanished into a cloud of miasma that scattered and nearly immediately went away, he wondered if the people had already realised that killing Daemons only made the miasma blocking out the sun thicker.

Likely not.

Still, it meant that the Cerberus was not a factor he could count on, and he considered approaching the group and applauding them for their achievements. But instead he turned around and returned to the Citadel, knowing that they would be returning to the underground base to recover and then going back to Hammerhead or Lestallum.

They would be returning home.

Ardyn only returned into the place he occupied while waiting for the Chosen to return.

As he pushed into the Citadel, he noticed that once more the statue of the Mystic had crumbled apart. It had done so several times in the last years, but this was the final straw. Perhaps attempting what he was trying to do would not work as well as he assumed. While the sigils he had painstakingly tracked down and taken from the fools they had chosen were still with him at all times, perhaps Daemonifying that energy to make them fight the Chosen was the wrong approach. It was quite a lot of energy that he could be spending more productively. There were a myriad things he could do now that he had gained control over parts of Crystalline magic. Perhaps manifesting a Wall around Insomnia would be a hilarious greeting.

No, just the Citadel itself would likely hurt more and cost less energy. If it came down to it he could always twist Tonitrus and Crepera if necessary.

Somnus on the other hand…

As he approached the statue, something in the atmosphere changed. Even the normally dormant but present powers of the Rogue and the Fierce were completely swallowed up in the power vacuum that developed the closer he got to that crumbled mess.

He stopped once he recognised that power vacuum; and he had expected that much after the last two encounters of a kind.

This was the calm before a thunderstorm, the power associated with the Fulgurian. Much like the Archaean before him, this god in particular did not appear physically. Ramuh was considered the kindest perhaps, the one who did not judge humans for their mistakes. Of course that was a mistake that mankind had made, something that the first Oracle and every Oracle after her reinforced. As far as people were concerned Ramuh was a benevolent god; as far as Ardyn was concerned Ramuh was yet another traitor deity that had ruined his life.

Whatever that fuzzy phantasm in front of the crumbled statue was, he had no idea. It looked like someone had dragged their hand across the fresh paint of a portrait; whoever this was was still _there_ technically, but not recognisable at all.

“ _Is that all you remember?”_

Much like Titan and Leviathan, Ramuh was the last part of the Hexatheon that avoided speaking to humans unless strictly necessary. Not because he preferred not to or was hard to understand; rather he believed that actions spoke louder than words. That was why the Trial of the Fulgurian was something that was considered odd compared to the rather straightforward combat ones that the others generally preferred according to scriptures from Solheim. To travel the region and see it for what it was, while endless thunderstorms buffeted the challenger, until at long last lightning unbarred the way forward.

The voice that was speaking now was familiar, but the phantasm did not changed the slightest. Smudged. Forgotten.

“ _Is that truly all that remains in your memories? A statue and a phantasm?”_

It was rather uncharacteristic for him, but instead of answering Ardyn lashed out at the phantasm. The smudged colours did not change the slightest as he clawed at them with a low hiss.

The trials of the gods were strange, but thunderstorms often made people think of other people. Someone to spend the time with, or to shield them. Whatever this was, it was rather clear that Ardyn was still a mortal to Ramuh and therefore the Fulgurian was using his powers to bring up a shape… a familiar shape…

Too familiar.

Then he realised what this was supposed to be.

“Go away, Somnus! Get lost already!”

The energy in this place was like a coil ready to spring, a trap ready to snap shut.

“That goes for you as well, Fulgurian! This is what you wanted, so live with it! Or un-live with it!”

He hated these very human emotions and actions as he watched the smudge of colour diffuse. The energy fizzled out like a spark, too, but at least they left as he demanded.

It wasn’t until a few days later that he realised that he really did not remember what his brother looked like outside of what the Old Wall portrayed him as. And that smudge of colour had made it rather hard to discern any details. Somnus as human he did not remember. Somnus as Lucii he did remember. How ironic that it was the human who had done all of this to him in a fit of self-assured righteousness.

* * *

Whispers went around the people in the city that there was a Daemon that could speak. Ardyn had not come across it, but the more he listened the more he started to wonder if it wasn’t that one. A creature that had risen, that had gotten some sort of intimidating status around the hunters that it was undefeatable. An entire crew of nearly thirty hunters wiped out in a single attack.

But when they had brought in the Daemon Hunter Amicitia and Commodore Highwind to deal with it, it had instead fled the scene and remained gone for a few days before re-emerging somewhere in the city. Ardyn had had to deal with creatures like these before. Though Daemons acted mostly on instinct, there were some that retained some shred of intelligence. This one in particular was sharply intelligent, almost rivalling a human-intelligent. It didn’t help that it was more powerful than the average Daemon; even Niflheim’s creations were nothing compared to this creature that floated through the streets almost unbothered.

It wasn’t until he watched it that he realised it wasn’t just moving about randomly looking for prey like most others were. Those were the calculated movements or a creature looking for something. Not desperately yet, but over time the calmness started to dissipate and gave way to mildly stressed looking about.

He stopped it in the middle of the street once to see if it truly spoke. All he saw was a flicker in the air, like a light in the dark. It made him pause; he’d never seen a Daemon conjure up something like that. There were myths that there were some that did something of the sort, but he had not once seen a Daemon conjure up a legitimate mirage. Even if it was small.

“Perhaps they ought to call you something else.” He reached out for the Daemon and the mirage immediately vanished. It quivered slightly, wisps of fire dancing around it and around his hand. “Will-o’-the-wisp is such an insulting name. But are you the Daemon they speak of?”

If it was, it definitely gave no answer.

He had to admit it was a fascinating creature. The perfect replacement for the Cerberus.

Not much later, it was once again fire that lit the night. Once upon a time it had been purging, cleansing. A sign of life, a wonderful reminder that even in the darkest night one did not have to go cold. This fire was still warm, but it had lost its comfort.

Stories told that fire had long ago lost that property, back when the Infernian turned against mankind because of their hubris. Fire after the fall of Solheim was something that was warm but that lacked comfort. A tool to be used instead of a gift from a god who loved mankind. It wasn’t as if one could stick a hand in the flames and expect not getting burnt by it, it had not been the case in Solheim either.

Ardyn stood amidst the flames with his arms stretched out.

But they refused to listen to him.

“Sulk all you want! When the time comes, you will arrive; that is what fate burnt into your soul and into my wretched existence!”

The fire hissed around him, a wildfire ready to strike. Hellfire ready to rain down upon the earth. But this wasn’t any fire. This was fire long since corrupted by the Scourge it had once unleashed.

Beating the Infernian into submission and turning him into an intelligent Daemon that still knew what it was had not exactly been high on Ardyn’s priorities list. Now he was glad that he had done it. That way it were the two of them now, standing face to face; one with a scowl and one with a frown.

“After all, you are one of the final challenges the Chosen will have to face. The last thing barring him from returning to his beloved childhood home, the seat of his throne, the most important part of his crown. One of the last barriers between him and the Accursed. That was ever your fate. That was what they condemned you to after you lost. Isn’t that exhilarating? A god, nothing more than a stepping stone to a mortal!”

Because no matter how he twisted it, no matter how many times his repulsive existence was barred from resting in peace – he was mortal, and the King of Light would come to remind him of that mortality. A grin split his features as the fire vanished as suddenly as it had appeared once the Infernian answered his call.

“You will heed my call one final time, Ifrit; and then we’ll both be done for, no matter how much the voices of the damned tell us we cannot lose!”

* * *

Despite the way it looked, the Accursed did not sleep. Ardyn definitely did not remember the last time he really, truly slept. There were those bouts of unconsciousness whenever he was in stasis that looked like sleep to laymen who had no idea about magic, but otherwise he did not sleep. Even back when he had demanded a rest while guiding Noctis and his retainers to the Disc of Cauthess he had instead remained quiet all night as he glared at the Chosen. He had felt rather insulted that this cocky child with no powers was to be the King of Light. He had often thought about which one of the Lucis Caelum’s would be the one he would wind up fighting, and truth be told he would have preferred the father over the son.

Right now he had been considering arguing with Lunafreya. Sometimes he felt her presence, and generally it was strongest when he sat on the throne that should have been his all along.

His eyes snapped open when he heard the sound of heels clicking on the marble floor.

He remained seated as the High Messenger, the goddess he had been waiting for since he saw the Fulgurian a year ago, approached. She stopped at the appropriate distance, even bowed lightly. The phantasm behind her did the same, though it was rather clear that Lunafreya was not here out of her own free will, and not for enjoyment. There was a deep shadow on her fair features, not at all different from the day she had so _unfortunately_ passed away.

“That makes five. I assume as with the rest of humanity, the Draconian will not grace us with his divine presence?”

Even Shiva’s expression was peculiarly glum. She likely knew what he had done to her former love, the one she had likely always hoped to see again when their bodies were restored properly. But Shiva’s body had fallen and it would take her centuries to recover from that properly. She was locked into a small body even when she was not trying to pose as the High Messenger Gentiana, and the only thing that told of her true power were the copies of herself that she was able to make with just the sheer cold of her powers.

“He will not,” Lunafreya said, her voice not wavering the slightest despite the fact that her expression was filled with a strange amount of grief.

Ardyn said nothing as the two of them stared at him. That Lunafreya’s expression only got sadder the more time passed, but she said nothing. She even lowered her head again and continued standing behind the Glacian, the only of the Six whose heart had truly broken the day she died.

“Now then, what gives me the honour of _welcoming_ you to the grand jewel of the Lucian Crown City, Insomnia?”

It was obvious. Shiva had remained absent since the day she had set loose Omega, and now she appeared again. Either history was about to derail itself again, or she was here to confirm that it was still as it should be.

Surely enough, the Glacian looked at Lunafreya, and the Oracle nodded.

She took a few steps forward until she was in front of the goddess she accompanied, and Ardyn saw her hesitate for the slightest of moments. But then she curtsied, a copy of her weapon still in her hands as if she were holding a staff and not a trident.

Then the sadness on her face was gone, a serene calm replacing it as she looked back up at the man who had ended her life. That was perhaps more intimidating than any glare any person in history had ever shot him.

“The Glacian was sent to tell you that the time has come. It will not be long now.” The slightest twinge of sadness echoed in her voice. “So be ready. Any day now.”

Ardyn only crossed his arms. “Ten years of darkness – four years in the Crystal? Do you _honestly_ believe _that_ is a long time? Is this a joke?”

“It has to be enough,” Shiva said gently behind Lunafreya. “The fire your attempted to stoke by feeding it with hatred has become determination. The sadness you instilled in that heart has become purpose. Though perhaps not the correct path, it _will_ be enough.”

He glared at them, an Lunafreya put both her hands on her trident. “We will let the Chosen judge whether your rest will be peaceful or not.”

For a moment he recalled Ignis, dangling in his grip with that awful sneer on his face. How he would be waiting for Ardyn in hell.

On the other hand, he knew how easily the resigned forgave. Lunafreya should have gone down with hatred in her eyes and not promising salvation – but she had been so resigned to her fate that it made sense for her.

Ardyn watched as the Oracle vanished, and the Glacian in the form of the High Messenger followed shortly thereafter.

He knew a way to ensure that any sort of resigned forgiveness would be wiped from Noctis’ thoughts before they ever engaged in battle. No matter how resigned, there was one way to stoke the flames of hatred.

Ardyn left the Citadel. He would only return here after setting the final stage properly, but he still felt odd leaving it now. He turned around to look at the building that was the home of his relatives, of his brother’s legacy.

Somehow, he felt an odd pang of something as he marched off to whisper into the city devoid of life. He felt odd when he called for the hundreds upon thousands of Daemons that now called this city their home to send some forth. The base of operations that the Glaives stationed in the city had managed to defend until now would be a very likely point of interest for the Chosen and his retainers. A flood of lesser Daemons that overwhelmed with numbers rather than might. He made certain there were more than enough challenging ones sprinkled among the remnants of the Niflheim occupants, those broken MTs that remained functioning even ten years after the empire had fallen.

Perhaps he had started considering this city home after all. Not a comfortable home. But a hollow shell that held completely forgotten memories. Not something he wanted to preserve, not something he wanted to remember. He stood on the ruins of his past life because his brother had built his kingdom on top of that.

“No,” he whispered into the dark as he stretched out a hand to signal stop to something, “not you. You’re coming with me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'know, writing long fics with involved plots is all fun and games until you're about to finish it.  
> I mean, no one saw that downright pathetic breakdown I had when I finished 'Amaranthus', because I was stuck at home without an internet connection. I didn't have one over 'that which can eternal lie' probably because I wrote 80,000 of it during nanowrimo last year, so it was. Too much to process.
> 
> Having finished this chapter however I feel. I dunno. Foreboding sense of dread. Maybe it'll get less intense once I start the first chapter of my next project. But right now, man.
> 
> All I can really say is.  
> Thank you all for sticking with this for so long. We're on the home stretch now.


	40. ... our mortality

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before you continue on to this chapter, take a peek at its name.  
> Then go back and look at Chapter 1's name.
> 
> I said there were two memento mori "jokes" in tu fui, ego eris; and a lot of you rightfully got the thinly veiled memento dagger and Mori that Ignis carried. The second one confused a few people; because it just didn't seem to exist at all.  
> Well.  
> Back when I started this fic I believed that what eventually became chapter 38 would be the final one. In that case, the chapter would have been an Ignis chapter called "... that you will die."  
> Then I presumed I would end it with an Ardyn chapter called "DEATH".  
> Both complete that memento mori "joke" just as much as this one does.
> 
> Either way, here goes. I'll see you guys in the end of the chapter notes.

He’d considered many places quiet in his life. In the Citadel only the very top was quiet, or perhaps some of the most backwards rooms that had not been in use for several generations of Lucian kings. Outside of Lucis, some parts of the countryside were surprisingly quiet at night. The last night in Altissia before the Trial of the Tidemother had been quiet – just him, Ignis, Prompto and Gladio sitting at the Maagho for a while before returning to the Leveille; that gondola ride had been the most quiet part of their travel together thus far. Ravus’ airship when they returned to Lestallum without Ignis. Sitting in his room after Cor had died, after Ravus had died. The silent pyre for Loqi.

The flight back to Lestallum after barely getting away from the Daemons. Aranea had not asked questions – she’d taken a look at him and softly asked if it was time for them to return _home –_ but otherwise it had been quiet. Focused.

He had been focused when he called for every single person who was considered a main force in Lestallum, as he presented them the Ring of the Lucii and the fact that Ignis was _dead._ Not turned into a Daemon. As far as they were concerned Ignis was dead – as far as Aranea was concerned Noctis had even killed the man who had killed her two closest friends and comrades. That was right. Their farewells were quiet, solemn. Gladio only gave him a pat on the back. Cindy promised she’d be looking after Prompto in his stead until his return. Aranea nodded. Monica looked strangely distant – Ignis’ voice echoed in the back of his mind, how countless people in the Citadel had lied to them about Noctis’ fate. Perhaps Monica was one of these people. Iris nodded at him, tears running down her face; he had no idea what she believed but perhaps she thought that Ignis had died getting Noctis out of a bad situation, had broken through the mind control that Noctis now knew had always been an excuse.

He considered his walk to the Crystal with the Ring of the Lucii still in his hands quiet. Chokingly quiet, even. His steps broke the tranquillity of the place they kept the Crystal safe, his heartbeat sounded like gunshots in the silence.

But no matter how many times he and Ignis sat side by side and watched the night sky without a word, no matter how many funeral pyres with the people quietly watching the embers dance through the air; no matter what sort of silence he considered… none of them compared to the Crystal itself.

The Ring of the Lucii, ancient heirloom of his family. His father’s suffering, Luna’s death and Ignis’ despair were directly linked to this thing. Slipping it on should not have been so easy. The power emanating off it had been overwhelming, but Noctis had clenched his jaw and ground his teeth and jammed it onto his hand. For a split second he wanted to scream as something seared through his body, but then just as suddenly as it had begun, it died down.

He’d approached the Crystal determined.

The determination crumbled when this all-encompassing silence choked every single sound around him. But he waited. He knew something had to be here; the Crystal had welcomed him with open arms. Not in the way he had seen his father commune with it exactly once. Just once, back when he was a kid and half asleep in his father’s arms. He would never forget the way his father put his hand on the Crystal, then removed it as if he had gotten an electric shock. He said something to it and Noctis had chosen that moment to fall asleep.

Now, over 20 years later, he realised that was the exact moment that the gods decided his fate. That was what they told his father, that was when his father made the decision to never tell him or anyone around him what awaited the Chosen.

Born to die.

Those words burned in the back of his mind as he waited in that vast emptiness that lay within the Crystal. He almost wanted to call for something, someone – he felt that he was not on his own in here. He waited for someone calling for the Chosen, to end this horrible silence that left him only with his thoughts.

He was going to _die._ Ignis had done all of this nonsense because the knowledge had driven him off a deep end. Knowing that Ignis had turned against everything he considered his life just for the sake of trying to find a way to save Noctis and winding up with nothing but an uncontrollable sickness to his name broke his heart all over again.

His heart was broken.

He hadn’t considered that since the day Ravus had slapped some sense into him. His heart was utterly and completely broken, and knowing why Ignis had done all of this made him want to curl up and die. Not for the world. Not because the gods told him to. He just wanted to curl up, lie down, and die. He understood why his father had kept that a secret from him. Wondered whether Luna and Ravus had known. Wondered what could have happened had any of them made different choices. It all came back down to Ardyn – his _relative._

There were just so many things going on in his head that he nearly screamed his anger and grief out to the world. But the world did not hear him. Would not hear him. _Could_ not hear him.

This all-encompassing silence was the only witness to how a breakdown long overdue started to work its way through his mind, numbed his limbs and his thoughts until finally, at long last, after what felt like an eternity in this crystalline and perfectly still silence, something moved.

Now, Noctis had yelled at most of the Hexatheon at this point. But just seeing the Draconian right now was making him seethe, unable to scream the anger and grief in his heart at this overwhelming deity. Though, he figured, the Draconian likely knew what was going on in Noctis’ head. This was the god who had watched over his family since the beginning of time. He breathed in slowly, exhaled slowly. The Ring of the Lucii on his hand glimmered in the dim light and reflected it just as the metal body of Bahamut did.

“ _This was not how it was supposed to happen.”_

“No shit,” Noctis snarled, his hands curling into fists. “Just too bad it didn’t go the way you wanted.”

The Crystal and its powers had always intimidated him, humbled him even. Even just the thought of one day having to hold up the Wall had properly terrified him, along with the knowledge that all this power was supposedly his, for he was Chosen. Every time that terror got the better of him someone was there to take care of him – only once did Ignis and he escalate that situation and had their fight about duty and privilege. It was about that time that he realised that he needed Ignis, not just because he was excellent at everything he did but also because Noctis loved him. Had loved him for a while, perhaps even since they were children.

He’d always hoped for one of these fairy tale romances, if he had to be honest with himself. It definitely felt like it – prince and advisor, and all those promises that one day when Noctis was crowned king he would make certain that they were allowed to be together. Till death do them part.

It had all shattered first when Noctis was betrothed to one of his closest friends and then all over again when the country lost the war. Perhaps a fairy tale ending could still happen, as long as he finally found Luna again and together they worked against the empire. And then everything had gone up in flames, over and over and _over_ again.

Ignis’ words echoed dully in his head. He knew what he needed to do, and defiance seared in his veins as he stared at Bahamut. The Draconian likely knew that Noctis knew, and chose to say nothing. They stared at one another; Noctis with a glare full of hatred and the Draconian with an unreadable expression. They remained like that for a while before Noctis breathed in loudly.

“I do have one… no, several questions.”

“ _So ask, Chosen.”_

To be quite honest, there was only one pressing question that he had. He chewed on his lower lip for a moment, trying to think of a way to phrase this.

There had to be a way to save those infected by the Scourge. Noctis wanted to know it – perhaps at least Ignis could _live_ , even though Noctis knew that this would be torture to Ignis. He’d spent enough time with him to know what Ignis would consider a punishment; and being left to live while Noctis died was perhaps the most cruel thing he could do. Perhaps that was a suitable punishment for what he’d done.

He looked up.

“Those whose bodies turned into--”

“ _There is no saving those who turned.”_

“You’ve gotta be kidding! There’s so many people who--”

Slowly, agonisingly slowly, the Draconian shook his head and Noctis’ words died in his throat. There was something in these eyes that completely quenched his burning anger – he still wasn’t happy, but he wasn’t angry either. He was honestly just tired. Very, very tired. But if he went to sleep now he knew that all he would see would be Ignis, Luna, Ravus, his father, Cor, all those faceless people who died in the dark and all of them begging him to end this.

“ _Those who have not turned will remain human when the sun rises once again. But those who already turned, it is too late for them, Chosen.”_

He could manage having to die at the end, now that he thought about it. He couldn’t exactly say he was able to live with it. He could come to terms with it, if he had enough time to mull on it and straighten everything the people in his immediate surroundings had ever done out to understand their choices, and which choice he had to make.

But not being able to save those who had turned was… a punch in the guts. It wasn’t just Ignis. All those other people; most of Niflheim, all those hunters and civilians lost because they decided to pack their things and leave before they turned into a Daemon in Lestallum. Noctis slowly looked back up at the Draconian, fully aware that his expression had gone from angry to completely empty and now to desperate.

“Fine. Fine! I can’t save them. Fine! But it’s _unfair_ that this--”

“ _We did try it once, Chosen.”_

His mind went back to Ardyn, he could almost feel the weight of the man’s foot on his chest again. How he called Noctis his ‘darling family’, how his expression went from annoyed to blind-hot anger when he mentioned the Mystic having been his brother. It had been a split second, but that second had been enough for him to feel the anger seething behind the mask of the Imperial Chancellor. It had been like staring into a pit of hot tar, the yellow that might have been a nice shade of light brown once upon a time darker than even the darkest night.

“That’s one thing I don’t understand.” There were so many things he did not understand, but he felt like the Draconian was not going to answer these. “He called me a second choice. That means he was your chosen saviour once – would he have had to die as well like I will have to?”

“ _Does that truly concern you?”_

“Of course it _fucking_ does! He’s the reason I was chosen, right? He’s the reason all of this happened, why all of this… anger was allowed to fester. The grief. The countless years people spent in the dark before it even became dark for real! The reason why I was… why I was allowed to be human, with human emotions. The reason why the one person I loved more than life itself wasn’t and went completely mad and off a deep end he was never supposed to go off of! The reason why Luna suffered until her _absolute fucking waste_ of a death! The reason why Ravus suffered quietly, alongside her, seething in hatred that could’ve been avoided if… if… if you’d just taken responsibility for the Ardyn case!”

The silence was oppressive.

He only heard his own broken heart hammer in his chest as the Draconian left.

Noctis curled up and screamed into his hands.

Reflection was silent. Empty.

Just as he felt at this point.

* * *

Lestallum, the City of Light, the last bastion of mankind, some called it.

Just looking at it through tired eyes told him that something had happened. Not to Lestallum, mind, but to another settlement. There were more buildings, more people in the street who ignored yet another tired-looking pale man in the darkness. He heard several dialects that definitely were not from Lucis – Accordo, perhaps. He figured something had happened to the Accordan settlement and a good amount of people had to be relocated.

He tapped a young man on the shoulder.

Noctis Lucis Caelum had spent six years in the darkness with these people, but Talcott Hester looked so different now. He had no idea how much time had passed proper; his phone was dead and he didn’t want to ask for the year. He wanted to get out of here as quietly and with as little fanfare as possible.

The young man turned around and his eyes went wide.

“You--”

Noctis hastily put a finger to his mouth. Talcott thankfully clamped his mouth shut and did not bow to him to not attract attention.

“Is Gladio in the city right now?”

Talcott nodded, still at a loss for words. He definitely looked kind of shocked that Noctis approached him first. “He is. Prompto’s here too; Miss Cindy’s at Hammerhead and Iris in Insomnia. Commodore Highwind’s not in Lucis right now, I’m afraid, and Monica’s with her.”

Noctis nodded.

Hearing that they all were alive was reassuring. Hearing that Prompto was still here filled him with a certain amount of dread, but apparently Talcott caught that change in expression.

“They’re all alive and awake. Slightly worse for the wear, yes, but all alive.”

He so desperately wanted Ignis to be here with them. He knew it was impossible, and that there was no way in hell Ignis would _ever_ come back. Ignis was gone even though he had sworn so often that he would be by Noctis’ side forever.

“Can you… can you get Gladio and Prompto for me?”

He wanted to leave for the city right away. There was definitely no point in waiting, not after he had spent so much time thinking about it in the peace and quiet that the Crystal had given him. He had weighed his options. Had considered everything said and done, had called for the Draconian a few time to get some more answers. In the end, the only option that remained was doing what he had been chosen for; no one else could and no one else would. Bahamut had gone as far as saying that there might have been a way, something that Ignis had even learned about – only to realise that it was impossible to achieve because the Scourge had made him eliminate the third party needed for it. That was the one time Noctis had screamed at the Draconian; the anger suddenly overwhelming him. Ignis had reached a conclusion, and had been left to realise that he had ruined it – if he had even gotten that far. The Draconian had not cushioned the words; he had said that the Scourge dulled even brilliant minds, and the royal advisor who had been raised to replace the Chosen King on the throne after his death had been gone too far by the time he learned of this. Noctis had not been able to take that.

But now, he was calm. His heart hammered in his chest like a dirty traitor as he kept his gaze on the ground and let his hair fall into his eyes to hide his face from the passing people. Only one of them stopped, a child no older than six years. Born in darkness, pale and delicate-looking. She stopped and looked at him, walked up to him and patted his hand with one of her small ones.

“C’mon, mister, there’s no need to look so gloomy!” She beamed at him, and he felt his already broken heart break even further. “A smile a day keeps the darkness away! Or something. Grandma used to say that.”

He shot her a smile. It felt horribly empty, but the girl seemed pleased that he was smiling. Just in that moment her mother came jogging over – Noctis remembered her, barely so. She was one of the people who had followed her leaders’ examples; she was a Niff who had fallen in love with a Lucian in Lestallum. Seeing her and her kid now only drove another rusty nail in his coffin; that kid had been happily babbling nonsense last time he had seen her.

“Sorry, sir! Come on, Tesni, let’s get home to dad, shall we?”

“Yes! Bye, mister!”

This time the smile was at least somewhat honest. It still felt surprisingly not real. Nothing really did.

He felt like he was floating down a river with no idea where it went – the only thing he knew was that he was not leaving this river alive. Not that many people knew he would not be emerging from that river alive, and walked beside him as he gently floated downstream.

Talcott returned.

Gladio looked just about the same. Older. Stronger. His hair was longer, and his face had definitely gotten messed up good in some fight. It were the scars that Noctis did not recognise that told that life had not gotten easier after he had disappeared.

Just seeing Prompto awake and standing was enough to nearly make him cry in relief. He also looked older, a little more banged up – but the usual energy seemed to radiate off him. Even if that pathetic goatee just honestly looked kind of sad on him. Then again, Noctis had not been there for this. It just looked off just as seeing Prompto unconscious in a bed recovering from nearly fatal blood loss had been wrong.

None of them said anything. There really wasn’t anything any of them wanted to say; it was Noctis who broke the almost awkward silence by taking a step forwards and wrapping his arms around the two of them.

He wanted to cry. Scream. Throw a fit and tell the gods to let him _live_ when they already had Ignis pay a price way too high for his hubris. But he did nothing except for a small laugh when his two living best friends returned that awkward hug.

“Prom, Gladio.”

“Took you long enough, Noct,” Prompto mumbled into his shoulder with a hiccup, “but here you are, for real this time.”

“Glad to have you back with us,” Gladio’s voice was still that deep rumble and Noctis only wanted to cry because neither of them knew he was going to die and they were so happy to see him again, “my liege.”

Again, silence. Noctis just enjoyed being close to people he knew, people he trusted.

But after four years he so desperately wanted to fill that silence with voices. Noise. He did not want that silence to be the last thing he remembered.

Alas, that was how it had to be, he presumed.

No heroic sacrifices without silence.

* * *

Hammerhead station, a quite literally shining example of humans being able to reclaim things from the dark if they put their minds to it. Though mostly only hunters on their way to Lestallum to reinforce the Glaives or people leaving insomnia for reports that could not be done over the messaging system came here, it looked… alive. People lived here, and not just the people who took care of weaponry or rations. There was even a Niff soldier in uniform here, leaning on the counter, flirting with the weaponsmith behind the desk of that makeshift store they had set up. Said weaponsmith was smiling despite her customer clearly not having a purchase in mind.

“Cin!” Prompto waved at the mechanic who had just appeared from behind a vehicle that _definitely_ looked like it was used to squash some lesser Daemons on the roads.

She almost bounced over. She’d always kind of been out of her element in Lestallum, her only outlet being the ability to modify weapons together with Prompto and Loqi. Talcott had brought them this far and would bring them to the bridge that connected to Insomnia, and during their drive here Gladio and Prompto had told him what had happened.

Four years had passed since Noctis left. He’d looked at his own face in the mirror. While slightly unkempt, there was something decidedly regal-looking about him now – he only realised that he looked a lot like his father. There were differences, quite striking ones, but it was clear that Noctis Lucis Caelum was Regis Lucis Caelum’s only son. He had to admit it depressed him to no end. Finally he looked like a king, and yet he was a divine inmate on the way to the death row.

Apparently Aranea had effectively become the new Immortal after surviving some rather suicidal missions she took on; but she lived regardless. She’d apparently come face to face with a Daemon that plagued Lestallum for a year completely on her own and emerged victorious – all she’d said about that was that if the people needed her she’d be there. Because the others couldn’t be.

Monica was considered on the same level as the late Crowe Altius now, a mage powerful enough to rend apart entire buildings if she put her mind to it. But she remained as humble as ever, despite Gladio, as head of the Crownsguard, quite literally offering her the position of Marshal. She declined. Said that while she was honoured, but that she would never live up to the expectations Cor left behind for the position. That was her final salute to a man she’d consistently fought with until they got along, she finally admitted that he was the best choice ever made for Marshal of the Crownsguard and she was happy just to serve in her usual position while upholding the memory of Cor Leonis.

Cindy had given up weapon modifications. Said they reminded her too much of what she had lost – she forwarded her knowledge about Niff weaponry to her grandfather, passed knowledge of Lucian weaponry to Niff mechanics, and threw herself into doing what she was best at: vehicle modifications, back at Hammerhead. Prompto effectively lived here as well; he’d been in Lestallum by sheer chance because he needed to get something from old man Cid.

Gladio, of all people Gladio, said that now that Noctis was back that perhaps it would be time for a wedding once the sun was back and the city secure enough again. Noctis had asked if he meant Prompto, but as it had turned out, it was Gladio himself. Noctis couldn’t believe his ears when Prompto said that no, it was Gladio and he was talking about a rather feisty Niff woman who’d nearly kicked his ass, but the second Gladio looked away with a slight blush creeping on his face he knew that his Shield was genuine.

A wedding he’d never see, and for a moment his mouth had gone completely dry as he congratulated Gladio.

All his Shield had done was wave an arm through the air and said that he’d introduce her to Noctis soon enough. Noctis knew that he’d never meet this woman who had managed to put an end to Gladio being kind of a skirtchaser or bad one-day-flirt.

Then again, in any other sort of reality he’d never had met her, Noctis realised. She was one of the civilians who had come with Loqi, someone who had taken up a weapon with boundless fury after she lost her half-brother to the Daemons, someone whose fury was redirected into something more constructive after being trained as a Glaive. With all these clashing nationalities and all these deeply traumatic stories, she quickly realised that there were many more things she could do. Instead of revenge she’d decided to fight for the light.

Something that quite a few people had started doing.

The Lucian Glaives still overwhelmingly claimed their fight was for hearth and home. Those from Tenebrae and Niflheim called for light against the blight. The Accordans that had been introduced in the way of the Glaives and hunters’ battle cry was that for a brighter tomorrow. Those battle cries all mixed together; some Lucian Glaives apparently fought for home and a brighter tomorrow, some for the bright instead of the blight. It was fascinating to listen to that.

Noctis waited while Prompto talked to Cindy. There were a few old hunt mark flyers attached to the walls and windows, each portraying a named Daemon that haunted Insomnia. Quite a few were crossed out – Noctis saw that a Cerberus was on that list.

There were still quite a few that were not crossed out, however.

Someone had even gone as far as to put a photo of Ardyn on one of these. It was one of the rare, before dark photos someone had managed to take of the Imperial Chancellor Izunia.

Noctis stared at that face. It did not look too familiar; then again it had been over two thousand years since Ardyn and the Mystic had lived as siblings. It made sense that there wasn’t much of a family resemblance except for minor details.

“It’s impressive how much they took down, isn’t it?”

He hadn’t heard Talcott approach and flinched slightly. It still felt wrong to call him a young man, but there was no denying that Talcott had finally grown up. Finally strong like he wanted to be back before Noctis had left for Altissia.

“It really is. I had no idea there was that… much… in Insomnia to begin with.”

“To be honest, I was rather surprised once the first reports started coming in myself. So I started doing some research, had people compile these.” He looked rather proud now. “Putting these here to keep track of what we take down was my idea.”

“Good one, Talcott.”

Those flying creatures had finally been named. Talcott went on to say that they had considered calling it a Phoenix at first, but it would have been a mockery of that ancient Sol legend. Eventually they had settled for just calling them firebird. It meant the same, but it did not have the same connections to past mythology. That was fine enough for the Glaives and hunters in Insomnia.

He went over a few more, mentioned what they did and where they usually were and what the problems with these were.

“That Glory of Old is a right bastard to track down. We don’t know why he’s so good at hiding; normally goblin-tier Daemons are not that… slippery. And Will-o’-the-Wisp… well, that one’s just awful all-around when it decides to fight. And Serenade here got an entire building to collapse, buried several hunters and got away unscathed despite being caught in the debris too.”

That continued for a while until Prompto, Cindy and Gladio came in.

Surprisingly enough, Cindy said nothing and just quietly pulled him into a hug. Noctis returned it kind of overwhelmed, but still she didn’t say anything. The silence got him into a bad state of mind again, and thus he wormed out of her almost crushing embrace and cleared his throat.

“Thanks for keeping your word, Cindy.”

She just sniffled. “Anytime. I’d do it all over again fer ya. ‘N anyways, ‘s not like he ain’t my… friend either.”

Noctis only laughed, which spread across the round of people. If he didn’t feel so raw and empty inside, perhaps this would have been a nice reunion.

* * *

Insomnia at night was something that quite a few people called a sight to behold, most of all Ignis who often returned to his apartment in the dead of night. While the city itself made it really hard for people to see the stars as they were, Ignis often joked that Insomnia had its own constellations that changed with the seasons, even with the day. Countless skyscrapers, all glittering in their own patterns depending on which apartment currently had its lights on. Even at night the city was alive because of the sheer volume of people living in it. Noctis always considered himself someone who enjoyed the city most at night, but he had a very soft spot for the sunset.

He’d never see the sun set. He’d never see the constellations Ignis joked about because electricity in most of the city was plain dead and the Glaives had only restored the most important parts of it; the part that gave energy to their main base and before they had lost them to Daemons the other bases they had established within the city.

Still, setting foot in the city he had left over ten years ago again felt right. It took him a deep breath and some intense amounts of willpower to not immediately have his legs give in and start wailing about how his last memory of home would be said home in shambles, but perhaps that too was what the gods wanted.

He was fine with dying.

He was not fine with knowing all the things he would never see or never see again.

Just having Gladio and Prompto behind him, even just that camping break they took for old time’s sake was almost too much for him. That obvious empty space where Ignis belonged hurt so much it completely numbed him, and Gladio and Prompto both noticed what kind of toll it took on Noctis. The worst thing was that they hadn’t known for certain until Noctis had told them at the campsite. Gladio had had a hunch, and while Prompto admitted he didn’t like thinking about it, they had both figured that Ignis might not be as dead as everyone else considered him to be.

“No, you’re both right,” Noctis had said with his head between his hands, “he wasn’t dead when I left. Might not be dead now, depending on whether you killed what he turned into or not.”

Burning a body was the only way to ensure that the Scourge did not re-animate it. Someone as sick as Ignis would have been better off burning alive than going through a transformation; and even a bullet through the brain would not have given him peace. Ignis had been right when he had said that Noctis needed to go and forget about him – knowing all of this was worse than anything else in the world. Perhaps it was a small mercy that perhaps whatever Ignis had turned into had been swept up in some mission. Dead and gone, at rest if struck with light-enhanced weapons.

The city was quiet. Empty.

He noticed that there were quite a few Daemons running about in the distance, and noticed some defunct MTs moving about awkwardly nearby. This was his home, this was what the empire and then Ardyn had turned it into. Noctis had not been to the city when they started retaking it, but it was obvious that Gladio and Prompto were used to this sight. He felt both put a hand on each of his shoulders, reassuringly.

They looked so strange in the proper uniforms of a Kingsglaive and Noctis in his actual royal raiment. Like they were made for completely different people; for a young man who had not been raised to rule, for a civilian he befriended, for the same guy he hadn’t managed to defeat in training until they were both way older than when they started. These clothes weren’t made for a tired-looking king whose country lay in ruins and whose throne was occupied by someone else, not made for a man born in Niflheim but raised in Lucis who had survived against all odds, not made for the Shield of the last King of Lucis.

Still, they went ahead and returned to the streets they knew. Ducked into the underground to make their way to the Glaive base.

It was heart-wrenching to see all those exhausted faces light up when Gladio announced that the king had returned. All those worn Glaives and hunters that camped in this place, their last base, suddenly looked like they could take on the world because their king was back and would bring back the light. Noctis would never see the country all these people would turn Lucis into. He’d never see Insomnia restored to its former glory, would never get to tell all those refugees that they could return to their home. Could not make amends to Galahd. Would never see Niflheim rise from the ashes of the Empire as something that the people could be proud of as Ravus liked to say. He had not even been a Niff, yet he cared about the country; almost as much as he cared about Tenebrae. It had made Noctis care about the people who thought that they would never see the sun rise again in their shelters; he had wanted to unite the planet to restore it together. Hand in hand. Not as friends maybe, but at least as fellow survivors.

He wouldn’t survive.

He delivered the speech he had prepared choked up and on the verge of tears. The people cheered for him when he finished, resounding yells for the King of Light. All that powerless energy had dispersed and given them the will to fight on just a little longer.

Dawn wasn’t that far away.

Still, coming face to face with Iris was perhaps the hardest part of this whole ordeal. Gladio and Prompto deliberately moved away to give her space, started talking to the head of the base about which way would be the wisest route to take to the Citadel this day.

In his heart, Iris was still the same girl he chased after while she was chasing a cat out of the Citadel. How she clung to him as they returned, how he took the blame for her just as Ignis always took the blame for him. That was why he had done it – Ignis had fretted about that for about a week until he saw that it made Gladio and Noctis get along. But now that he saw her, she was not that little girl any longer. It was foolish to see her as anything else but the first Glaive of the 114th King of Lucis. His first Glaive.

She pulled him into a long embrace, and Noctis laughed into her shoulder – she was taller than him. Way taller than him. Almost as tall as Gladio. He’d not paid much attention to it, but after not seeing her for four years he suddenly realised that she’d gone from Gladio’s defiant little sister to a warrior he was incredibly proud of.

“You’re back,” she whispered, and he knew that she was crying, “you’re actually back.”

It was a confession long overdue, but Noctis returned that hug. Perhaps in another life, he mused, he would be able to return her feelings. But if he was also the Chosen in that life, it would just break her heart. And no matter whether he loved her the same way she loved him or not, he did not want to break her heart like that. He _would_ break it anyway. Not that he’d be around to see it and suffer the consequences.

“I’m back.”

She only laughed, then let go of him. It was obvious that she was searching for the right words, despite having four years to think of them. “Noct, I...”

Perhaps it was a little bold to put a finger on her lips. But he did so with a smile, another one of these empty things that left him feeling rawer and rawer with every single one he gave. “It’s okay. I know. And I’m sorry I can’t return your feelings the way you want to.”

A few more tears ran down her face when she confessed that she did feel like that. Confessed that she knew all along he didn’t, but still wanted to believe in a fairy tale ending. The one thing that hurt more than anything else was telling her that perhaps, after the sun rose, she might get that ending still. Maybe even with the prince she wanted. Another little lie for the book, Noctis presumed, and watched her bow to him.

“I’m under no illusion that that’ll happen, Noct. But if you’ll have me, I’d love to help you rebuild the city after the sun’s back.”

“Iris, what kinda nonsense is that? There’s no one I’d rather have to help me rebuild it.”

Ignis. They both knew there was always Ignis.

But for the moment, Iris smiled.

By the gods, he hated this. Hated knowing that she’d be perhaps the one crying the most about the sun being back, now that Ignis was dead.

* * *

He’d expected a great many things. Had expected Ardyn to make a mockery of the Wall, perhaps, after that encounter they had had some years ago. He knew that Ardyn was capable of summoning it; maybe not at the scale that Noctis expected, but still enough to bar their entry into the Citadel.

Instead the man calmly stood there with his back to them in front of the Citadel, after their almost uninterrupted march through the rest of the city. It was just the three of them, and only one of Ardyn. Still, Noctis was under no illusion that Ardyn would let Gladio and Prompto help him in any way, shape, or form.

Having him stand outside of the Citadel with his back to them was… not something he had expected.

He wanted to say something, but the Accursed was faster.

“Two thousand years, and _this_ is who they send.” He turned around, and Noctis saw that his expression was completely devoid of any emotion. It was unusual for the rather expressive man, a chilling reminder that something was off still. “If I did not know they were serious about this and that the lady fate is ever cruel like that, I would start laughing. Loudly so.”

None of the three said anything as they watched Ardyn take a step backwards, towards the main gate leading into the courtyard in front of the Citadel.

“Two thousand years, and the fire they tried to stoke is barely more than a flame about to flicker out.” He raised a hand. “Five out of Six you have met; ‘twould be a waste to not have you meet the ever-elusive sixth, no?”

With that, he left through the gate and the atmosphere changed nearly immediately. Something rose from the depths of hell, choked out the cold air of perpetual darkness and replaced it with ash in his lungs, soot in his nose, fire on his skin. The Infernian was not a deity people thought about. He was depicted as something abominable in most scriptures, as someone who had unleashed horror upon the world because of mortal hubris that he could have punished differently. But seeing this deity consumed by the very sickness he had unleashed made Noctis nauseous beyond reckoning. Another victim in this horrible story, even if he had started it to begin with. But even the perpetrator could be turned into someone on the receiving end.

This was a vicious cycle of victims hurting victims, Noctis realised with a short jolt of horror. Ifrit had been hurt and he had turned against mankind. Mankind in turn pleaded the rest of the Hexatheon to help them, causing the Six to fall apart and fight against one of theirs. The Scourge hurt the earth, and the earth in turn produced things that could hurt the Scourge; two hearts beating irregularly beside one another. Eventually that had given birth to a Chosen who could save the wretched earth and still the sick heartbeat, but he himself was corrupted by it. Betrayed by brother and country, he could not find solace in death. And instead turned the boundless rage of one cast out by the earth and the gods against all creation. Against the god that started this.

Against the fate they could not escape.

Noctis was just another cog in that machine destiny had built, the final one to make the machine work and return everything to what it belonged to. To cleanse the playing field for something else to happen.

Gladio blocked the fire with his shield, grunting with effort as Prompto and Noctis huddled behind him.

Noctis took a deep breath. A breath that filled him with a power he hadn’t felt before, the answer to a call he had not realised he had made.

Bahamut came, a reply in the very physical manifestation of a sword suddenly burying itself between the Infernian and the three of them. A rain of swords that all dug into the streets without harming it despite being very, very real. The Infernian and the Draconian clashed once more, as they had all this time ago, before the earth had been left irreparably scarred by their final battle against one another. Noctis knew that they were supposed to have the same size as the Archaean. The Fulgurian was smaller because he had not died and only lost substantial amounts of power before laying down to rest. The Archaean held the meteor, frozen in place. They were supposed to be the size of the Hydraean, the size of the Glacian’s corpse lying in Ghorovas’ Rift.

But they weren’t.

The Hexatheon rose together after Bahamut answered his call; four against one.

The only one who did not move was the Glacian, her expression sombre and sad as she watched that struggle that Noctis had conjured up.

“Go forth, O Chosen,” she whispered gently as she seemingly split into several copies of herself. “We shall take care of my beloved. Bring this chapter to an end.”

Rest in peace was what she didn’t say.

Noctis, Gladio and Prompto stormed into the courtyard of the citadel.

* * *

He half expected the statues of the Fierce and the Rogue to come to life and attack them. Outside of the Citadel the struggle between the Six continued, but it was clear that the Infernian was losing – had already lost. Noctis felt a power he hadn’t had before thrumming through his veins. The power he needed to unleash on his throne after forcing the Accursed back to the Beyond once again. It was in his veins, his body, and he understood why he had to die for it. No living being should be allowed to have that much power, even if it was given by the Hexatheon. They could not override this because it united their powers together with the power of the Crystal, the very catalyst that the lady destiny had given Eos.

But the statues did not move. Hells, there was a crumbled mess just beyond the stone plate that said the name of the current ruler – still Regis Lucis Caelum CXIII because Noctis Lucis Caelum CXIV had not been in the city when it fell, had not received an official coronation until way later, had not sat on his throne. He would never get a reminder that the current acting ruler was him, all he would ever get was a memorial in his honour.

Was that crumbled mess the statue that represented the Mystic in the Old Wall? It made the most sense when he thought back to the seething anger Ardyn had emanated as he spat out that king’s moniker and said that he had called him brother once. Family, siblings. All things that Noctis never understood, no matter how many times he considered his best friends his brothers. In the end, he was an only child meant to die in the end to defeat a distant relative who had been wronged and might be on a righteous crusade for vengeance against the gods and his own family.

Noctis took a deep breath and walked past the plate bearing his father’s name, past the crumbled statue of the Mystic and the still ones of the Fierce and the Rogue. Those were all his ancestors, all people who were now waiting for him to finish what the gods had started. He was not going to let them down.

Though he was mad at his father for keeping all that information from him and putting Ignis through the agony of realising that he was a replacement for Noctis, at the end of the day he loved his father. Missed him dearly. Just as he loved Luna and missed her.

Nothing prevented them from entering the Citadel.

Now he could see the chaos that had befallen his childhood home with his own eyes instead of trying to picture it.

* * *

The silence was reminiscent of the silence within the Crystal. It was not something that Noctis enjoyed, but the Citadel had always been quiet. Not oppressively so, but quiet enough to warrant a certain amount of respect for the seat of the kingdom, for the place the Crystal was kept and where the Lucis Caelum dynasty had ruled the country from since times immemorial.

But where the Crystal had been the clear absence of living things and had felt right, the Citadel’s new silence was an awful reminder that this was _wrong._ It wasn’t supposed to be this ghastly.

Papers were strewn across the floor, and Noctis did not have to look at them to know who had left them there. The dried blood on them was enough to tell him that Ignis had read over them, that they were what had told his beloved advisor exactly the things that he was never supposed to know. There were scorch and scratch marks on the walls in the entrance hall, and Noctis shivered slightly as they made their way in. Gladio, too, sucked in a sharp breath. Just like Noctis he had effectively grown up in this place. The only one it didn’t mean much to other than the horrors of what had happened to the country was Prompto, and he remained quiet. Put his hands on both their shoulders as they pushed onwards.

When they reached the middle of the room, the lights suddenly flickered to life – someone had deliberately replaced all the broken bulbs and lamps and dimmed the intensity of the light. It didn’t hurt their eyes; it was just a passive-aggressive reminder how much time had passed and what a commodity light had become in a ruined world.

“He’s actually… giving us a grand reception,” he said quietly.

Ten years earlier, he would have considered a grand reception something else entirely. All the pomp associated with royalty.

Just these lights working as intended, dimmed deliberately for a reason, was enough to send a shiver down his spine. This was the way the Accursed greeted the Chosen – with soft light in the dark. Just as the soft light of dawn would herald the end of the Scourge at large.

“Do you… think an elevator’s working?” Prompto’s voice was surprisingly subdued, and Gladio only shrugged.

“No point in wondering when we can go check.”

Their steps echoed through the silent Citadel as they made their way to the elevators. Once upon a time this had been a busy place, with several people going going to and coming from the higher floors. This was the seat of the government, the heart of Lucis. Countless people, all of whom had known the prince’s face and his name. Getting out through here was always the hardest part, but Ignis had always managed to find a way somehow. Barely anyone paid mind to Ignis Scientia until they learned that the boy was generally sneaking out the Prince of Lucis in his spare time, and Noctis remembered how happy Ignis had been whenever they figured out different ways out of the Citadel that did not take them through this entrance, or the entrance meant for the members of the council. The way they’d both marvelled at that empty ballroom below the ground, how they’d sat on the floor there for a long time until Ignis had laughed and asked if he could have that dance.

Noctis held his breath when he pressed the button on an elevator and heard the hum of the machine working as it was intended to work. All those times he’d been in one of these with Ignis, all those times some adult had dragged them into one after getting caught. Standing beside Gladio, then later together with Prompto as he took him to the Crownsguard training rooms further up and in the back.

They quietly entered, and Noctis immediately realised that only one two buttons were working. The ground floor – and the floor that led to the throne room. If they wanted to go anywhere else they would have to take the stairs, but there was no point in going anywhere else. He hit the button without asking the other two about it, and the three of them watched the door slide shut.

“He’s really… taking us by the hand, isn’t he?” Noctis asked after a moment of that silence he had come to loathe more than anything else in the world.

Gladio grunted an agreement and Prompto shrugged.

“I really… don’t have a good feeling about this,” Prompto eventually quipped as the elevator continued its ascent. “Like the Infernian was… too easy? Like he was expecting you to summon the entire rest of the Hexatheon? Why was the courtyard so damned… empty. It doesn’t make _sense.”_

Not after everything that Talcott had laboured to uncover about history. Eventually he had made a breakthrough, had found a scripture from the time that mentioned the Mystic’s older brother _by name._ Mentioned that the union of the Lucis Caelum and the Izunia families was one of the biggest events in recent Lucian history – back when Lucis was barely more than a small country on a continent that bore the same name. Before the continental conquest had started.

It confirmed that Ardyn Lucis Caelum had existed at some point, it explained how Ardyn had chosen the last name Izunia and gotten away with no one questioning it; the family had married into the Lucis Caelum family and faded from memory.

“Yeah. Me too. Something’s _off._ But I have no damned clue what it is,” Gladio agreed.

All Noctis did was flinch when a sharp sting went through his back. He hunched over with a wheeze, and Gladio immediately moved forward to see if Noctis was about to fall over or not.

“Noct!? You okay?”

“One.”

“Ah.”

Sudden, inexplicable pain that would vanish in a few seconds. True to his word, Noctis straightened up before the elevator dinged softly to signal that it had reached its destination – not a moment later the doors slid open silently.

This hallway looked surprisingly untouched by the violence that had taken place in the Citadel the day the Niflheim Empire had taken over Insomnia. Other than the occasional knocked-down picture frame and shattered window there was nothing keeping them from walking straight to the throne room’s antechamber. That room that had always made his father look so sad that Noctis had come to hate it, and now he understood why. All those pictures that told the story as it should have gone, the story of the Chosen who purged the world and freed the tormented souls from their limbo together with the Oracle and the grace of the gods. Noctis had the grace of the gods, he had Luna’s support and he could _feel_ it softly shimmering just beyond that immense power that he now held thanks to the covenants and the Ring of the Lucii.

But there wouldn’t be a king left to thank for that.

The three of them froze when they saw that this accursed room did indeed harbour the Accursed.

This time Ardyn had his back turned to them again, his head turned up and clearly locked onto a painting. But this time there was something terrifying about that.

He did not turn around.

“Long did I ponder on what to welcome you with. The Infernian alone seemed hardly suitable for this joke of a Chosen they sent forth after only giving him four years to hone tranquillity within his clearly disturbed mind. I wondered if the Old Wall which you had never seen rise to fight was the right choice as I originally planned. Those I detest most, tearing each other apart! But alas, it was not the correct choice.”

Noctis gave Gladio and Prompto a signal to stay behind him. Ardyn was not going to kill him before they had their destiny-given showdown. But these two were a factor that Ardyn would either eliminate entirely or just get out of the picture for the time being.

“Perhaps some familiar faces would have been fitting. What say you, Noctis: a reunion with those you lost along the way! But once again, that was not something that would be _suitable._ After all, the oh so gracious Hexatheon already granted you that.”

Finally he turned his head slightly to throw a look at the three of them, and something cold went through the room. Not wind. Just something that changed in the atmosphere further.

“Beyond this room lies the throne you so desperately need to reclaim. The last instrument needed for the sun to rise. I cannot just have you marching into that unchallenged.”

“Then challenge me now.”

“Where’s the fun in that, Noctis? I’ve waited, longer than you can even begin to imagine.” That voice was too smooth. Ardyn suddenly moved, finally turned to look at them.

Behind him something rose, not unlike the darkness he had commanded when they had met four years ago. But it moved differently than the darkness he had commanded ages ago.

“...”

The Accursed looked at them, his gaze colder than the Glacian’s ice. “A Daemon known for its sheer destructive capabilities, but instead of using it to turn every single building in this empty city into dust, it flees its challengers. But those times it chooses to fight, its all-consuming flames look like ancient spirits floating about. Your hunters and Glaives went ahead and called it after something that the Mystic allegedly managed to subdue – Will-o’-the-Wisp.”

A subspecies of Necromancer; more terrifying than Red Giants even. It wasn’t as large as some grew to be, but it was enough to immediately humble any foolish enough to challenge it.

“A rather insulting name, if you ask me,” Ardyn all but purred as that Daemon moved behind him. “Back in my day, we already had a name for these unfortunate creatures that my brother managed to eradicate. Swamp lights, creatures that lure in mortals by promising them what they desire. Some say that perhaps they were the souls of those unfortunate enough to die before their time, before they managed to achieve things they desperately wanted to do.”

Ardyn turned towards the door to the throne room.

“Though perhaps its scientific name that has since been forgotten by the pages of time means more to you. The term that survived is ‘Will-o’-the-Wisp’. The laymen’s name for it.”

He all but vanished suddenly, leaving only the Daemon in the room and a shimmering shield in the hallway they had come out of, cutting off their escape.

“What did Somnus, the Mystic, the Founder, call them, you ask?” Ardyn’s voice echoed loud and clear through the room despite the speaker not being present.

The Daemon moved, and suddenly there were wisps of fire dancing around it. More than the usual Necromancer commanded, all of them buzzing with something that didn’t seem right at all.

“The name did survive in some ways, though not related to the low-end Daemons that they were. The scientist’s family that died out had part of it in their last name, up until the day they died out. Roughly around the time the Conqueror died, I would say. But part of it became a most curious first name. Something you should be intimately familiar with, I dare say!”

A soft laugh that made every hair on Noctis’ body stand. He already felt he knew what was coming next.

“Behold! The Daemon that you call Will-o’-the-Wisp; the Daemon that you should be calling _Ignis fatuus.”_

* * *

Fighting Ignis had always been a delicate dance between the two of them. Noctis and Ignis on a battlefield covered each others bases, mowed through fields of enemies as long as they didn’t need to defend.

Gladio and Ignis had been a brutal beatdown together, Ignis covering what Gladio could not reach, and Gladio blocking what Ignis could not outrun.

Ignis and Prompto hadn’t really meshed that well, but Ignis appreciated the other’s skill with a gun and Prompto was consistently in awe of the way Ignis managed to throw around magic flasks as if they were balls of yarn rather than something extremely dangerous and highly explosive.

Prompto’s hands shook when he raised the gun. He couldn’t aim – he was terrified. Noctis warped in front of him to cleave one of the fireballs sent into his direction in twain.

“God damn, what the fuck!” Gladio grunted as he also moved in to shield the two of them properly.

Green fire danced across the walls, snaked up the pillars, spilled across the floor. It reminded him of the Infernian earlier, except a lot more controlled. This wasn’t overwhelming power with no strategy behind it, this was someone weaving a net of magic, a trap that was ready to spring up at any moment and cause serious harm.

But there were some things Noctis had noticed in the last few minutes since Ardyn had left. One, the Daemon had immediately started lashing out desperately. It was… cornered, just as they were, had likely been brought here through the control that Ardyn had over Daemons in general. Two, no Daemons were in the Citadel; perhaps this was causing some immense stress.

Three.

Daemonic fire was crawling across the paintings, was leaving horrid burns on these ancient murals telling of a prophecy – but what the fire seemed to avoid burning was what people considered the King of Light descending. The fire had its way with the pictures of the gods, the humans, the Daemons; but it left the pictures of those chosen to fight against the dark alone.

Prompto quivered beside Noctis, muttering something that he didn’t quite catch. But Gladio did, and Noctis saw his Shield stiffen a little.

“Yes. I remember that.”

“… Well, it… explains a lot.”

Whatever this conversation meant, Noctis did not have the context for it. He would likely never get it, too, but Prompto lowered his gun at last.

“I can’t do this. I can’t. Hands’re shakin’ too much. If he’s telling the truth, that’s...”

Ignis Scientia. The man who had nearly killed Prompto.

Noctis squeezed his eyes shut as Gladio blocked another burst of flame that shot out of the ground in front of them.

“Well, just means I’ve seen that ‘fore. Don’t worry, Prom, you’re gonna be fine.”

Noctis paused.

It hadn’t really struck him until now. He had not considered this at all because it wasn’t relevant.

All three of them had encountered Ignis in the past after he had gone to stand beside Ardyn for reasons that neither Gladio not Prompto knew. Gladio had met him in Insomnia after they had both wound up walking into a trap that Ardyn had set for the Glaives; he had encountered an Ignis who was considered a traitor but who was also desperate to buy more time now that Noctis knew what he had been trying to do. Prompto had encountered a man driven mad by his infection and not getting anywhere, a man whose senses had been dulled and who no longer figured out the consequences his actions still had because he had already burnt all bridges he could have down, either out of desperation after getting sick or before that infection to prevent them from actively seeking him out and bringing him home. Noctis meanwhile had met an Ignis who was at the end of the line, who had peeked into the abyss and not learned anything that helped him. A man who resigned to the fate that the Chosen had, a man who resigned to the fact that he was a murderer and would turn into a Daemon.

The Daemon let out a thin wail that made both his Shield and his friend cringe.

“What?”

“Noct,” Prompto said hoarsely, “that Daemon talks. Very, very rarely. The Glaives said that much at least, but none of us ever heard it except for once when it let out this… horrible fucking wail. Sounded like someone sobbing as it turned to the Citadel before managing to outsmart all of us and vanishing. Y’know, we called it Will-o’-the-Wisp exactly for that reason. Those swamp lights Ardyn mentioned were said to have talked as well – green, floating fireballs that the Mystic sent straight back to the hell they crawled out from. That’s why we’re calling it that. But we never figured out why that Daemon in particular talked.”

Gladio moved the shield a little. “Like most Daemons, it babbles. Doesn’t make much sense without context. Allegedly this one talked destiny. About not letting someone do something. It went through the streets like it was looking for something, always homing in around the main streets that led to the Citadel. We literally managed to trace its actual path after a while, not that it ever moved at the same speed. Sometimes it was faster. Sometimes it was slower. It’s… perhaps the most slippery Daemon of them all.”

Just like Ignis had managed to avoid getting dragged back to Insomnia for so long. Noctis nodded, his throat dry and his mind empty as he stared at this thing.

“If that’s… really Ignis. There’s gotta be a way to make it stop.”

“Forget it,” Gladio immediately snarled while Prompto dropped the gun to wrap his arms around Noctis from behind. “We’re not hugging it out with a Daemon just so it stops _trying to kill us.”_

Noctis wormed his way out of Prompto’s arms and curled his hands into fists. He put them against Gladio’s shoulder blades with a deep sigh. “I’m not saying we should go hug a Daemon, for fuck’s sake. I’m saying there’s a way to figure out if Ardyn’s telling the truth or not.” His entire body felt numb as he continued. “If it isn’t him, we waltz through it and carry on to the main attraction. If it is him, we… we put him down. Deliver justice – if that’s Ignis, we’ll be the judges. The jury. The _executioners._ Just… just trust me, Gladio, Prompto.”

Shield and gunman looked at each other for a moment.

“Noct, we’d trust you blind.”

“You’re a fucking idiot, but he said exactly what I was thinking. Noct, if you told us to jump off that bridge, we’d question it but do it if you just told us to trust you.”

Noctis cracked a sad grin. “Well then, do you both trust me?”

“Dumb question.”

“’Course we do, idiot.”

Noctis nodded and stood up. The Daemon immediately stopped its wailing – the flames started hissing loudly, shooting forth from the floor and the paintings but not touching him at all.

“Stand still then. Don’t follow me unless I say something.” He raised his voice. “Did Ardyn tell the truth?”

For a moment, only the crackle of fire echoed through the room while Gladio and Prompto also stood up to stand behind Noctis. If all things failed, they could still beat it together. But Noctis caught the way the Daemon quivered, how it moved ever so slightly.

“ _No lies.”_ The voice sounded wrong, so very wrong. Noctis’ insides turned upside down when he heard that thin, still rather wail-y voice that was so familiar it hurt. _“The gods did.”_

Noctis pressed his lips together and nodded. That voice was definitely Ignis’, twisted just as he himself was. He took a step forwards.

Flames immediately rained from the ceiling, hissed against his skin.

Daemons would get wiped out when he died. Bahamut had said as much; and if it weren’t for the power sweeping them away to bring forth the first light in years, it would have been the light itself that made these creatures vanish at long last. Not a single one of these things that had already turned would survive to see the sunrise – just as Noctis was not going to see the sun rise again.

He ignored the burns he sustained, ignored the fact that this thing started lashing out desperately and clawed open his face. Ignis was liable to run if something overwhelmed him because he rarely got overwhelmed. It were emotions that scared him because he was taught to be picture perfect and calculating. All those were traits associated with a good ruler as long as their subjects were not taken into consideration. Noctis would have not been an efficient ruler because he lacked the skill to focus on the details, but the people would have loved him because he understood how to handle people if he got a moment to think about it. Ignis on the other hand would have been scarily efficient at the cost of his subjects’ happiness.

Noctis stopped dead. It made the Daemon stop lashing out as well.

“It’s fine, Ignis.”

It shuddered.

“I figured out a way.”

Ignis and Noctis had made a promise to not lie to each other when they were children. It was something that had made admitting they had feelings for one another harder than it should have been; Ignis had struggled with propriety and Noctis had struggled with the thought of Ignis not returning his admittedly intense feelings. Therefore they danced around the issue until one day Noctis decided he had had enough of that. He could handle getting rejected for the sake of propriety or because Ignis simply didn’t return his feelings as long as they remained friends. Then Ignis had been so late that Noctis nearly decided to give up on it.

This little lie would at least get them to avoid a fight. A fight that Noctis knew he would lose no matter how powerful he was now.

He’d considered using the Ring of the Lucii. But he just… couldn’t. He’d used it on lesser Daemons around the city, yes, but the thought of doing that to this Daemon made the blood freeze in his veins.

The Daemon stood there frozen, clearly confused by what he was saying.

“Destiny _can_ be changed. I will change it. Because I figured out a way,” he whispered just loud enough that the Daemon heard him and Gladio and Prompto didn’t.

That moment of hesitation was all he needed. With a heavy heart he called forth a weapon from the Armiger. The Sword of the Mystic lay heavy in his hands as he warped. With a heavy thud he collided with the Daemon. The flames hissed, new ones spouting from the floor and more raining from the ceiling. The entire room was caught in a furious hiss of fire, and Noctis yanked the sword out of that creature. Drove it back in, this time with a more focused aim. Necromancers were strong when they kept their distance between their opponents, but not strong or durable in close quarters.

“You can go rest now.”

The flames grew higher – then they died down.

For a split second he felt like this thing was staring at him. _“You’re lying, Noct. You’re lying.”_

He smiled at what once was Ignis Scientia, watched as it slowly started dissolving under the pressure of a royal arm.

“Got me.” It felt so dumb to say it in that cheery voice he’d always used as child when they played hide-and-seek in the Citadel, but for some reason that was what his quiet voice defaulted to. “We’ll see each other at dawn, then.”

For a moment he thought he heard Ignis laugh. He almost realised too late it was a sob.

“ _We won’t. I lied. Only hell awaits my kind.”_

With that, the Daemon vanished as Daemons did, it dissolved with a violent gurgle.

* * *

He wouldn’t have been surprised if all of this had been a fever dream in the end. That he was dying after attacking Ardyn in the dark while Gladio and Iris slept, oblivious to him dying. But the choked sounds of Gladio and Prompto collapsing behind him, the display of quite a lot of corpses hanging from the ceiling in the throne room – it was enough to finally break down those walls that Noctis had managed to build around himself in those four years. Had he had a longer time to think about it, he was fairly certain that he could have kept it together.

Instead he followed Ardyn with barely more than white-hot rage searing through his body.

The fact that Ardyn looked so disappointed did not help this case the slightest.

“So these are the repercussions that throwing history off its anointed path have,” was all he said before summoning a weapon. “Very well. Your rage, your hatred – use it, Chosen! Disappoint me and those who died for you for a final time!”

All the training paid off in the end. Ardyn was just as quick at cycling through the weapons as Noctis was. It was a brutal clash that sent a building collapsing behind them when they sent blasts of opposing elements against each other. Were this another situation, he would have laughed at how Noctis used ice while Ardyn stuck with fire; just as how the Glacian loved mankind and wanted it to be saved, the Infernian wanted it to come to its untimely end. A mirror match of the strangest kind.

Just once his summoned weapon shattered against a thin magical shield that manifested between Ardyn and his weapon. Noctis summoned another in his fury – Ignis’ dagger. He drove it into that shield, sent cracks across it. It shattered with horrible screech of glass breaking, sent a shower of crystalline shards that vanished halfway to the ground raining down upon Ardyn as Noctis dragged the dagger down the man’s face before burying it in his shoulder. He watched black blood seep out of the wound, watched how Ardyn’s expression went from sour to furious.

This wasn’t a glorious battle between ancestor and descendant that history could talk about.

This was a fight between two wounded animals.

Noctis was raw and bleeding, every wound fresh on his soul and every scratch that bled on his body only helping him stay numb enough to fight without screaming.

Ardyn meanwhile had been raw and bleeding once, but now he was mostly scar tissue tearing anew, old wounds festering rather than the searing pain of new ones.

“A joke!” Ardyn laughed as he tossed the Sword of the Mystic that glowed in an unearthly red light whenever he summoned it aside. “This has to be a _joke!_ For four years you’ve rested to collect your mind and powers for the sacrifice you have to make! Four thrice-damned years! Even ten would have been a joke to begin with, but this has sincerely missed its punchline!”

It wasn’t a happy laugh. Noctis’ fury received a dim shock as he realised that the man’s facade was cracking, finally coming undone somehow.

“If only your beloved little advisor had figured out a way to end this without having to sacrifice you at the end!”

That made something in Noctis’ head snap entirely. Both he and Ardyn let out a growl at one another, all of a sudden the full Armiger at their disposal.

Ardyn had two less weapons than Noctis for a moment. For a moment he was under the illusion that he could win.

Then more weapons blinked into existence, one by one. A myriad of weapons that shone in the dark, stark red against the sky without any light. They looked surreal, just as surreal as having the full power of the gods at his side was.

But this was overwhelming.

“Do you now understand? Two thousand years, I’ve waited two thousand years! And here you are, Chosen! Chosen to _die_ , and barely capable of standing up against the powers I have amassed! Tell me, Noctis, is this your idea of a sick joke? Did Bahamut tell you to start laughing when I figured out you were playing an elaborate prank on me?”

The weapons that Noctis did not recognise started flickering, violently so. Several shattered as piece by piece a scythe manifested in Ardyn’s hands. They were high above the skyscrapers of Insomnia, with red shards raining down from where the weapons broke apart, a trail of red sparks flittering towards the city down below, vanishing long before they even were on the same altitude as the tops of the highest still-standing skyscrapers in Insomnia. Only the Citadel still towered above them, the silent monument of their bloodline.

“And all you manage is to rally the hearts of those without hope, like I did once upon a time! Without having to turn into a monster to save those you wish to serve from above, without having the country howl for your death as your own flesh and blood casts you out! Tell me Noctis, how does it feel to break through to a creature barely clinging to its memories, just enough to know it does not want to kill you? How does it feel to tear the sickly but still beating heart of your beloved into _pieces_ , quite literally?”

The sound of glass shattering echoed through the city as Noctis lunged forwards with the swords around him. Ardyn blocked him with a laugh that sounded hysteric.

The city below was dead and hollow. Daemons were moving through it rather than the people that belonged here. The people Noctis had always wanted to spare the horrors of war after watching how his father had to handle it. If he truly was the Chosen, he said to Ignis one evening long before he realised his own feelings, then perhaps he could. The city outside had glittered as it always did at night, lights and noise and the bustle of life audible and visible even up in this apartment, and Ignis had merely cocked his head slightly and smiled softly. Said that Noctis might manage this, might manage to bring peace to Lucis and perhaps all of Eos as it was predestined. And if he ever wavered along the way, Ignis would be standing beside him just as Lady Lunafreya would.

Neither of them were here now. It was just Noctis on his own, the stillness of Reflection still haunting him as he sent his weapon back and forth, occasionally one slipping past his defences and occasionally one slipping past Ardyn’s defences.

However much time passed, he had no idea. Eventually their powers left then when Noctis managed a focused strike, the two of them plummeting to the ground. Ironically, right between the two statues that Ardyn had deliberately placed in front of the Citadel, in front of the pathetic heap that was the statue built in the likeness of his brother and Noctis’ direct ancestor.

For a second they both struggled to get back to their feet – and then Noctis felt it. Something rose, directly from the Ring of the Lucii that he was wearing and that he had all but forgotten at this point. The darkness around the Citadel deepened for a moment, the air all but blistering with sudden energy seeping through it.

Then he felt it.

Rain.

Somehow, the skies opened up for the first time in ten years. It was raining, and Ardyn threw his head back to let out a laugh.

Noctis threw a look above, only to see that the Lucii had somehow manifested, likely thanks to the Hexatheon that had had their battle just in front of the gates to this place. The audience to this final battle between the chosen who was quickly losing his spirits, and the Accursed who was definitely far gone by now.

Hells they were both barely managing to stand. Noctis was leaning against the sword his father had always carried, the aptly named Sword of the Father. Ardyn’s scythe had completely shattered, the pieces dissolving quickly in a trail of red. The sword he chose in the end was the Sword of the Mystic, the blade his brother had carried.

“Two thousand years,” Ardyn rasped, “against four years. You can remember every single thing that happened to you in your pathetic little life that was happy despite all the hardships you endured. You cannot remember whom you never met; cannot remember that which you never learned. I cannot even remember the faces of the people who wronged me! Cannot remember whether it was my nephew or niece niece who continued your accursed bloodline! Two thousand _lousy_ years I’ve _waited_ , Noct. And _this_ is who they throw against me!”

They both sluggishly swung their chosen swords against the other, the blades meeting until Noctis dropped his. Ardyn answered with a swing that could have easily beheaded Noctis had he not barely managed to dodge.

“I wanted history to _remember_ me, in any way, in any capacity! If not as the Sage who healed them, then as the monster who tormented the masses! But not even that they will allow me. The Accursed, a creature not capable of coherent thought, vanquished by the Chosen in the most heroic sacrifice history has ever seen! By the gods, I so desperately wanted to tear your advisor into pieces! Make him beg for his life, make him beg for _your_ life! Wouldn’t that have been a twist to history derailed! Wanted him to put up a fight against you, perhaps have him tear you apart! But not even that pleasure they grant me!”

Ardyn swung his sword. Noctis picked his up. Suddenly he felt a rush, felt the Sword of the Father leave him. Two Swords of the Mystic crashed against one another, made Ardyn stumble.

Noctis used that to strike.

Black flecks of something, little clouds of blood and miasma poured forth from the wound. Ardyn switched weapons, Noctis followed suit. All of a sudden he was outpacing the marginally stronger Accursed, as if someone was guiding his hands to a victory that tasted bitter at best.

Ardyn attempted to block the blows Noctis delivered with the Trident of the Oracle and the Sword of the Father. He failed, but still had not fallen. Instead he attempted to once again summon his personal weapon even if all that remained of it was a broken handle. Still enough to harm someone.

Noctis drew the sword by his side that he had forgotten until now.

Alba Leonis glinted in the dark, stark white against the bloody red and black of Ardyn’s broken scythe.

Silence, all-encompassing as usual. The sound of flesh tearing. Noctis squeezed his eyes shot and held his breath, half expecting to be met with the sharp pain of being stabbed.

Nothing of the sort happened.

A wet cough made him open his eyes again.

Ardyn was staring at him with his strangely glowing eyes flaring with both hot hatred and pain. Noctis let go of the weapon, and Ardyn crumpled to the ground.

“I have… no say in what history makes of us,” Noctis said lowly as he stared down at the violently convulsing Accursed at his feet. “The only thing I know is that against my better judgement, I’ve let anger guide my hand. And by the gods, I do not regret it the slightest. Know this, Ardyn Lucis Caelum of the Izunia family; I will find you. I will find you, and I will be the weight that pulls you to the depths of hell where my beloved waits for you.”

* * *

Leaving Gladio and Prompto behind at the steps leading to the Citadel was perhaps the most cruel thing he could have done. They had likely long figured out that Noctis would not be returning here alive; the rain only made even more of a parody of this. In the distance, the Daemons that were in Insomnia howled. With the Accursed out of the picture, whatever unspoken rule kept them from entering the Citadel grounds was out of effect. Noctis raised the hand with the Ring of the Lucii glittering on the finger once he was inside the Citadel and had again made his way to the room before the throne room. That antechamber that was still covered in soot and smelled of ash, but in that silence Noctis manifested a thin shield that would keep anything and anyone from entering it. He expanded it to the hole in the throne room.

The Wall, not expanded by amplifiers and the Crystal. This was the furthest it reached without overly straining his already strained body, and Noctis took a deep breath as he pushed the door open.

The throne room lay silent, the grotesque forest of fake corpses that Ardyn had used to welcome him with gone along with its master. But they would be back just like he would be if he did not do this. He truly, desperately wanted to live. Not for himself but for the people who had died along the way. As Bahamut had put it, they had all given their everything for the Chosen; thus in return he had to give his everything for all of the others.

Noctis wondered if that was truly the way they thought. He knew that Ignis wanted him to live, knew that Lunafreya would have defied that fate if she could have thanks to Ravus. Ravus himself thought like that, and his father had raised him to enjoy life as much as he could. Somehow it did not feel like any of these people wanted him to die.

Just as Ardyn did not want to live, now that he thought about it. But instead of mulling over this for too long, Noctis moved.

That was his throne, the throne he would never sit on for longer than these last few moments he had alive.

“Sorry, dad.” His hand brushed the throne as he stood beside it. “I tried. I tried to walk as tall as I know you would’ve wanted me to. I don’t think I quite managed. But… I’m home now.”

The throne had always been something that intimidated him. It was the one thing the always associated with his father, just as the Ring of the Lucii had been. Not once in his life had Noctis been able to imagine himself sitting on that throne and ruling the country as wisely as his father had, and perhaps he had just been unable to imagine it because deep down he always knew that his fate was to die for Eos because the gods wanted him to. He always imagined that one day he would sit there with his father retired rather than dead, with Ignis and Luna by his side because the Oracle belonged to the side of the Chosen and Ignis had sworn that he’d be there for him, always. Neither of them were here. Only that thin glimmer of the magical shield he had manifested to keep Daemons from getting in accompanied him as he finally took his rightful place on the throne.

So many people had said that they couldn’t imagine him on the throne. That perhaps the dynasty would end long before King Regis died.

That Ignis was better suited for this throne because he had a good head on his shoulders and a sharp wit underneath the sarcasm he met people he didn’t like with. Noctis had agreed with that exactly once with Ignis nearby, a while after they had admitted what felt towards one another.

Another one of these days with the soft light of the sunset falling into the room they were in, this time in the Citadel after a council meeting that they had been requested to attend personally. Ignis had almost immediately grabbed Noctis by the arms, had looked at him with a stern look on his face.

Said that Noctis would be the best king that Lucis ever had as long as he believed in it, believed in himself. That Ignis knew that Noctis wouldn’t let down the people – because the only expectations he’d never meet would be his own.

He closed his eyes for a moment, collected his thoughts as he had within the Crystal whenever the Draconian left him to his own devices. The silence here was… the same. It was heavy. Lonely. Thrumming with the strange powers that no mortal should hold.

His opened his eyes, and summoned his father’s sword.

He’d let anger guide him this far, had sworn to be the weight that dragged Ardyn down to hell. He was going to make good on that promise at least, rather than the promise to save the world at the cost of his own life. The sun would rise, and Noctis Lucis Caelum CXIV would not be alive to see it. He would be dead and gone, just as so many others he had known in his life.

Eradicating Ardyn was his top priority, because he had never had the time to accept his fate, had never had the time to accept everyone’s choices. Four years, Ardyn had laughed at with mad despair lacing his voice. He had been right, of course. Noctis would have needed more time to come to terms with everyone else’s sacrifices along with his own.

He summoned his father’s blade. Rammed it into the cracked floor beneath his feet as he sat on the throne that he would never rule from.

“Kings of Lucis, come to me!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right off the bat, I really just gotta... thank a lot of people. Most of the readers, especially the ones that told me about it in comments. A special shoutout to those who took their time commenting on every chapter, registered users or not. And a very special one to Mariyekos; the first time you left one of your long comments I nearly had a heart attack right on the spot.
> 
> The usual suspects who let me bounce my plot off them before and while writing this; Jon and Kieran especially. You kept me from making a pretty dumb decision late in the story.
> 
> Honestly, I never thought it'd get this kind of reception. This is the kind of self-indulgent fic I used to write when I was younger, and hideously depressed but still had the energy to channel that into writing. Now that I'm much better, I went back to this kind of genre as a last hurrah of a sort. Dunno if you've read my other works, but if you have you'll notice that they all have... hopeful endings. Where people managed something in the end.  
> (Apologies to people who thought that everything would work out or would at least save Noctis in the end. Originally this fic was gonna end with Ignis turning into a Daemon and leaving what happened afterwards up to interpretation, but I figured that this wouldn't be... good. Leaving it here leaves barely any room for imagination other than what the game gave us.)  
> tu fui, ego eris was never supposed to have one of these endings. I hatched the idea alongside the plot points "Ignis joins Ardyn to figure out how to kill him", "Ravus joins with Noctis", and "Ignis kills Ravus because of the Scourge/in self-defence". I thought that maybe it'd be Amaranthus' length.
> 
> This is the longest work I've ever written. It dwarfs Amaranthus nearly a solid 100,000 words. I was already kind of overwhelmed when that hit its 147,000 words; now imagine me sitting here with my head between my hands because the document says its 236,595.
> 
> Man, I've been crying for the past 20 minutes, I'll just.  
> Really, all I can say here is.  
> Thanks. Thank you for sticking with this. I hope you enjoyed it. 'Cause I sure did enjoy writing it.


	41. VERSE 2 - But you can still run.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You might be wondering, "What the fuck?".
> 
> There's only thing you ought to be aware of.  
> Everything up until Chapter 13 is the same. Chapter 13 and Cor's death happened as they did in the fic, but there's some slight changes occurring. It'll get more clear as I write more of it.
> 
> But yeah. Without further ado, I leave you with the beginning to the good ending so many of you rooted for when this beast was an in-progress and the ending a mystery.

Everything that followed that day was a blur. When his entire body wasn’t broken from failing to dodge the man’s horrid training methods—allegedly to beat the softness and remnants of loyalty out of him—then the ever familiar static filled his mind, sapped him of his strength and ability to focus. All of that was lost in the sea of misery he had so willingly thrown himself into, but at this point Ignis had to admit one thing: This was getting him nowhere. Fast.

The more time he spent going through archives and laying waste to rooms in the Citadel when they didn’t give him the information he needed, the more he wanted to _run._ Everything haunted him more than he wanted to admit, and no matter how much he wanted to believe that they had only raised him as a replacement for Noctis, he couldn’t. He just _couldn’t._ Not after all the kindness everyone had shown him and Noctis. All the reassurances that Noctis would make a fantastic king, all the times they caught the two of them after Ignis had managed to get them out at Noctis’ request. It had all been for their safety. Even if Cor and the rest of King Regis’ closer circle had lied—it should not have ended as it had.

Every time he closed his eyes to actually rest he found himself at that river again, and heard people tell him to go home. Go home and face the consequences for his actions, and every time he realised that there was something or someone just outside of his vision always.

There was no going to the place he belonged to face consequences without having a solution. Ignis would not go crawling back to Lestallum without a means to save Noctis. Even if in the end they executed him under Niff law. He grabbed another piece of paper while that horrible buzzing noise that sounded vaguely like a voice was trying to call him but was drowned out by static rose again. Wherever Ardyn had gone, Ignis had no idea. He preferred keeping out of that man’s way lately—just a day or two ago Ignis had nearly lost an eye to that man’s vicious training methods. How he had gotten out of that with just a small scratch when his vision had gone completely red remained a mystery related to whatever made Ardyn the Accursed.

This former conference room also had nothing valuable. Just stacks of paper, most of them signed by King Mors. Wartime reports, heavy losses, financial nonsense and logistical nightmares. Crownsguard trainee reports, some of them penned by Cor—clearly in a moving vehicle, back when he was fifteen and on the road with King Regis. He’d gone over them as he sat on the ground cross-legged, but not a single thing held anything that could be of use. He scattered the papers with a sigh and leaned against the wall. His head was pounding, the edges of his vision were starting to swim and flicker strangely.

The very same had happened at the Altar of the Tidemother and in Zegnautus Keep what seemed like ages ago.

He had closed his eyes to lessen the impact of that nausea-inducing effect these bouts had on him, but now he snapped his eyes open again. He hadn’t actively thought about it yet, there had always been too many strange things going on or he had been too busy thinking about other things. But the Altar of the Tidemother and Zegnautus Keep… both had been instances where a vision had shown him things that were yet to come or had already happened and therefore shaped the future.

There were two families on Eos whose duties were to remember what had come to pass and to protect the future yet to come. He fished the Ring of the Lucii out of his pocket and looked at it for a moment—ever since he had been close to this damned thing, the visions had happened and the headaches persisted.

But the Lucii normally did not approach people of their own volition. They were watchers at best and Noctis’ future blade at worst. No matter what was going on in the world outside of Insomnia, the visions had happened before anything else had happened. Which only left one possible answer.

The static and this faint voice that seemed to be calling him got more intense, and Ignis squeezed his eyes shut. It hurt as if his head was going to split in half, which was likely worsened by the fact the guilt had left him in already pathetic shape and the beatings he took that definitely did not remotely help the matter.

“… Lady Lunafreya, it’s you, isn’t it? You’re the one who let me… see what awaited down the path that you would not be able to take.”

The static noise fizzled out almost gently, leaving him with silence around him for the first time since Cor died. No, since he had failed to control his anger and it had gotten Cor killed. Either way, he was faced with the silence of Insomnia in the dark, with only the occasional Daemon noise breaking that silence for a few minutes.

“ _Yes, Ignis,”_ her voice rang through the silence clearly as if she were standing right beside him, _“that was me.”_

“Why?”

She paused for a while, as if she hadn’t expected that sort of question. Ignis continued leaning against the wall and closed his eyes again with a long sigh. So far every person or entity he had encountered had somehow told him to go home. He expected Lunafreya to say the same—and he was perfectly willing to ignore her. Perhaps having someone who tried to get him to leave would have him swallow down his guilt and find a solution, so this situation might be a blessing in disguise.

“ _Because I believed that us mortals have the power to stray off the beaten path and forge a new future. That Lady Destiny did not bind us as she binds the gods.”_

“Well, were you wrong?”

He could almost imagine that woman he had never seen alive in person chewing on her lips nervously as she tried to figure out what to say next. _“I don’t think so._ _But much like you, I have not figured out a solution. Your seething anger—your determination and fear—it is all correct. But it blinds you.”_

He put an arm across his eyes. “Maybe so. But what else am I to do?”

“… _As Oracle, I feel compelled to tell you to go where you belong.”_

He dropped the arm and sat up straight. There it was, that spark of anger that he had hoped she would make him feel; the defiant determination to tell the gods and destiny to shove it. But before he could angrily tell her that he would not be crawling back to Lestallum empty-handed, he felt something in the room. A power that decidedly did not feel _good,_ was likely interfering with his link to Ardyn.

“ _But I am both Oracle and person. I should be enforcing the will of the gods, but... I know the Six are not pleased with this deviation you have caused, but they hope that history corrects itself. I say we seek a way to keep it off track without continuing walking down this path. Not hand in hand. Not even as friends. But as allies.”_

* * *

No matter how many libraries he overturned when Ardyn was not interested in making him regret not killing Cor, no matter how many rooms he went through and no amount of artefacts seemed to hold the information he needed. There was nothing but prophecies, and even staring at the pictures before the throne room gave him nothing.

Those pictures that had always felt kind of strange the more he learned about them. As if some piece of information had been missing—as he had since learned, no person told him that in order to bring back the light and banish the Scourge Noctis had to die. Lunafreya had been the first who had given him that information.

Not that the two of them had gotten far together. There seemed to be nothing about this anywhere, and the one time he asked if she knew if there was anything in Tenebrae that might help, she had fallen strangely silent for a long time. Only after a few hours of silence she had confessed that there was nothing of the sort. She had spent a rather impressive amount of time locked into Fenestala Manor since the day her mother had been murdered, and she had asked servants to bring her books from just about everywhere. She would have noticed something of the sort, even if she had never actively entertained the thought of going against destiny to save Noctis at that point.

He ran a hand over a picture.

“At least I’m starting to understand why some people reacted strangely whenever they came into this room.”

“ _Ah?”_

“In hindsight it should have been obvious. The way Lord Clarus always closed his eyes for a moment too long. How Cor’s shoulders seemed to droop. How King Regis—“

“… _King Regis. But of course.”_

Ignis looked around the room. They had figured out that Lunafreya was attached to the Ring of the Lucii like some sort of butterfly trapped in a spiderweb. She had used her powers for something truly outrageous, something that went against all logic of the world as she begged whatever entity would listen to grant Noctis their strength so he could defeat Leviathan. It had given the Lucii a form outside of the ring of their bloodline, and had somehow done something that Lunafreya herself had not seen in proper action yet. She assumed that magic would have awoken in those who had held it once upon a time, and that the Lucii would likely soon rise to face the challenge of history off its rails.

“Mind sharing what you’re thinking?”

He still had his hand on the painting, that accursed thing that displayed everything neatly except for the fact that the Chosen wasn’t called that because they were going to be a saviour—they would be called Chosen because they were a specifically selected sacrifice, and the Oracle that was fated to stand beside them was another sacrifice.

“ _Ignis? Would you mind… would you mind going to the room that the escape route from the room the treaty was supposed to be signed leads? But… but through the parking lot. The elevator is broken.”_

He raised an eyebrow, uncertain how to respond. She sounded rather strangely hollow, as if something heavy were weighing on her mind. He was fully aware that he often sounded the same, but Lunafreya never commented on it in the past few days.

He knew which room she was referring to. Newspapers had mentioned it as the place the king had been discovered in, and Ignis had leaned against the wall that morning in Galdin Quay with his entire body trembling in terror. King Regis had been so close to getting out of the Citadel and possibly out of the city because none knew it better than the ruler. So very close. That room in particular was one where Noctis and Ignis had often made their escapes through. He recalled several times where he and Noctis even just stopped in it to comment on the fact that it didn’t seemed used at all, despite being one of the best rooms in the Citadel altogether.

Ignis carefully removed his hand from those haunted paintings and started walking.

He felt rather uneasy overall, uncertain of what she actually wanted him to do. Were he in an even worse state he was fairly certain that he might have walked into that room after walking the empty streets of Insomnia, an accident that definitely would never have ended well for him. In a sense, he was grateful that Lunafreya had started talking to him and immediately did not start telling him to go home. The guilt and the anger would have been… too much. He would have simply ignored her, would have turned even more furious. But after these few days with her searching for something as well made him feel things other than overwhelming anger and sadness.

He was starting to understand why Ardyn was the way he was.

For most of his trip down to the ground levels he felt like a ghost haunting the Citadel. Something that didn’t really belong in this city—a living being—something that had been forgotten. Ignis slowly but steadily understood why the Accursed acted with such hatred behind every action, because every single mortal being would start acting out of line if forced to live in a world that forgot all too soon. He himself was well on his way down that same path except that outside of Ardyn’s terrible training sessions he was very much mortal still. A mortal stuck in the dark, a mortal next to the source of the Scourge. Clinging on to anger and the stout belief that he could change the future likely were the only things keeping him from turning into a Daemon. Because there was absolutely no way a still sane person would have stayed in Insomnia, the city of a thousand graves.

The way down to ground levels were so familiar that Ignis nearly caught himself trying to sneak past people who clearly weren’t there. The Empire had definitely cleared out the corpses before abandoning Insomnia and leaving it to the Daemons long before darkness swallowed up the world. Many of the people he knew growing up would never be coming back; Noctis and he would not be sneaking out of the Citadel any time soon.

“Lunafreya?”

His steps and voice echoed in the empty hallway. He felt something up ahead that definitely did not belong in a city as dead as Insomnia, something that was either alive or very, very powerful. Likely the latter since Lunafreya had asked him to go there.

“ _What is it?”_ She sounded short of breath and kind of panicked. He hadn’t really considered it before, but she had likely witnessed King Regis’ death—she had carried the Ring of the Lucii to Altissia after all.

“… Would things have changed had Ravus and I arrived sooner?”

He slowed down a little. Around the next corner was the room she wanted him to go, and he was curious. This was one of the many regrets he had, though it did not weigh him down with guilt as his most recent actions did. But her death was definitely something that had been avoidable, something so profoundly awful that sometimes he did wonder how things would have gone had she lived. Whether she would have told Noctis what she knew or not.

“… _I don’t know, Ignis. Perhaps I would have lived only to die from… other complications. The fate of the Oracle… was tied to that of the King.”_

Ignis nodded, then started walking again. Lunafreya had been with him since the Altar of the Tidemother. She had likely understood his motivations, had seen his actions. She now knew that even though he was acting in direct defiance to the gods and the destiny they had laid out for Noctis, he knew that at some point he had gone too far. There was no undoing what had been done, he could not turn back and make them not happen.

The only thing he could do at this point was to walk ahead with his head held high and his mind focused on the goal. Not obsessively and despaired but with focus.

“ _Could you pick up that thing on the floor? That’s all.”_

He picked up the strange trinket off the ground and pocketed it next to the Ring of the Lucii, then sharply turned around and left this place.

The dried blood on the floor he ignored pointedly.

* * *

It had been a few hours.

He had snatched a room plan of the Citadel that employees got the first time they arrived here that showed even the private quarters on a need-to-know basis. Ignis, of course, knew which room was which. The unmarked ones were left unmarked to confuse those people; either there was nothing in them or they were the quarters given to the highest-standing members of the king’s inner circle. There was no way one could ever get into any of these unsupervised, but just in case the marks had been left out.

Ignis furiously crossed off room after room that he had gone through in the past few days together with Lunafreya, and the ones he had taken care of before he had heard her clearly for the first time. Most of them only held a certain kind of information, and nothing that worked. No report on agriculture would be helping him with his goal of changing the future. In the safety of his room he had scattered his belongings on the ground; despite Ardyn’s tendency to arrive uninvited there was something that Ignis had noticed about the man.

He avoided personal rooms, even as spare as Ignis’ was. It was strange, but Ignis paid it no further mind. It wasn’t relevant.

His own dagger and the one that Ardyn had given him were on his left, the Ring of the Lucii and the strange trinket Lunafreya had made him pick up were on his right. The map was in front of him, and Ignis was once again sitting on the floor cross-legged. He had started doing that a lot since returning to Insomnia. Slowly, he moved the pen across the map to cross off another room he’d been in earlier.

“ _That’s an… impressive amount of rooms you’ve been through.”_

“Mhm.”

There were countless more, but not nearly enough to keep him occupied for much longer.

“Well. There are some I will have to cross off anyway. Noctis’ room does not hold anything relevant.” Crossed it off. “Neither do Gladiolus’ quarters. Nor mine. Or any of these; those were simply meant for one-on-two meetings with King Regis.”

Lunafreya let out a hum as Ignis crossed them out.

“ _Anything else?”_

“I suppose I can mark the queen’s quarters, too. Those have been locked off since her death and I’m fairly certain King Regis threw the key away. So I’ll—“

“ _Wait!”_

That voice was new. New and very, very familiar.

Ignis dropped the pen and frantically looked around the room, though he already knew that there was no one here but him. Ardyn remained absent. There were likely other living people still in Insomnia, but at this point they had likely all hidden in some underground tunnel because those were easier to keep safe—and none of them would willingly go to the Citadel knowing it was likely haunted or had been taken over by Daemons. Besides, there was only one person who that voice could belong to; Ignis knew that voice as well as he knew Noctis’.

“Your… Your Majesty.”

Ignis should have been mad. Should have started screaming and crying right there, should have started accusing this man of lying just as he had accused Cor not too long ago. But he did nothing. Remained still, held his breath. This was not something he had expected; he actually threw a fearful glance at the Ring of the Lucii. But the ring itself remained as it was, a terrible legacy to a family that could have done nothing to change the fate of one of theirs all by themselves. It was the strange bauble that Lunafreya had asked him to pick up that seemed to be glowing softly.

“ _There might be something in Aulea’s room.”_

He had considered going into it. But there was something strange about that room, something that seemed to ward off other people.

Ignis grabbed everything around him, shoved the bauble and the Ring of the Lucii into his pockets and jumped to his feet with a curse.

Of course.

Something was in this room, and faint magic warded it off; kept people from wanting to go in and see whatever belongings of the late queen were still around. That kind of spell wasn’t uncommon on Sol artefacts.

* * *

The room itself was even more quiet than the rest of the Citadel. Untouched, undisturbed. But Ignis went through it like a whirlwind, made the dust of too many years without a proper visitor dance in the standing air. He made certain not to break things, however.

It was full to the brim with little figures and lovingly arranged bookshelves. He had never really gotten to know the queen because she had died when he had been a measly three years old, but everyone else ha described her as devilishly clever but also sickeningly sweet and caring. Queen Aulea had been a person who had fought her battles in the council rooms, her battlefields had been political debates rather than actual wartime battlegrounds. It showed as he went over the bookshelves; most of these books were compilations of politics throughout Lucis and even Eos at large. Several books still had bookmarks sticking out of them—and every single bookmark looked lovingly handmade. The only thing that made Ignis pause for a moment was the framed photo on the neatly tidied desk.

A younger King Regis, a younger Queen Aulea; she had her arm slung around his shoulders and had pulled him towards her. Just the fact that the queen was slightly taller than the king was something no one had ever mentioned, but she was beaming at the camera. In the background stood Lord Clarus, a hand smacked into his face and his mouth open as if he were saying something to someone. Whoever had taken that photo had not been particularly skilled, but considering that King Regis looked older than twenty but not old enough to have been crowned king quite yet the person who had taken that photo had likely been Cor. After all, Weskham had remained in Altissia, Cid and Regis had broken off all contact, and Ignis doubted that any of the people in that photo would let just about anyone take a photo of them like this.

For that moment he paused the guilt welled up inside him again, made him almost nauseous. Too late to turn back—Cor was dead. So were King Regis and Queen Aulea.

But the desk itself proved to be the centre of that strange aura he had felt. Something or other here was definitely not meant to be here; Sol trinkets were all to be delivered to the proper historians because most of them were actively dangerous.

Ignis carefully went through everything, opened the drawers. It was likely in the locked drawer, but it could never hurt to check. There were more stacks of paper in the first drawer, all of them seemingly on something or other relating to Galahd. The second drawer held official correspondence between her and someone else, likely related to her station—or because she had been writing Weskham. The man had mentioned something like that while they stayed in Altissia.

In the third drawer… just scraps, it seemed. Scraps that were splashed with the occasional colour—it took Ignis a moment to realise that those were papers that a toddler had likely slammed a few pens across. Seeing that made his chest tighten—Noctis had not been particularly keen on drawing when they had met, something that Ignis had always found kind of curious. With his father as busy as he was and the queen dead… well. There was the explanation for something he had stopped wondering about years ago.

Ignis Scientia was notoriously known for being, as some of the Glaive called it, ‘a crafty little shit’. He had learned how to unlock virtually anything but usually avoided doing it for the sake of keeping his integrity—he was the son of nobles. Nobles did not crack locks fairly easily just so they could sneak the Prince of Lucis out to get some ice cream. But right now he was both deeply ashamed of his actions and rather happy that he had learned how to do this; searching for a key in this room would have taken forever.

That particular drawer only held a book. Barely thicker than his notebooks full of recipes and other little notes on something or other, those notebooks he had left behind in Niflheim after he had made his choice. But something about it was strange, strange enough that he looked at it.

The cover didn’t seem to be in a language that he knew.

“Your Majesty? I don’t think I can read this. But is this what you meant?”

There was a moment of silence where King Regis said nothing, but Ignis felt it. It felt as if the man was holding his breath despite being dead, and the dust that danced in the air here also seemed to come to a complete standstill for a moment.

“ _I had forgotten about that thing. Worry not, it’s not written in Sol. Just the cover is.”_

Ignis carefully opened it, and inside were indeed letters he recognised. Plain Eosian. But the words inside… were not exactly something he recognised for the most part.

“To watch the country from up high, to see the light from down below, to stand upon fire and breathe under water—those are the keys to P… strange word. Pitioss?”

_“She talked about that once. Or rather, used it as bedtime story for Noctis when he was a newborn. How that somewhere in Lucis lay these ruins that seem to bend reality.”_

Bend reality. Ignis’ eyes widened a little; that was the one way he would describe Ardyn’s magic when he wasn’t drawing upon the Daemonic.

_“I chalked it up as nonsense, but Lucis is large . Large enough for ruins like that to lie somewhere and require someone travel across the continent to get inside. Not that anyone has for quite a while; otherwise we would have heard about them.”_

“And… wait. Wait, Your Majesty. Are you saying that maybe these ruins hold the key to…?”

_“The Hexatheon will be less than pleased with you going against them, Lunafreya. But as you said, history is already off its predetermined tracks. Were we only bound to the Ring of the Lucii, we would have never allowed anything to happen, but… considering that your plea for support in Altissia awoke the spark of magic in most who have used it in the past or held the dormant ability to, we are now able to interfere slightly. Able to guide. We would lend our power to your cause—if Ignis can find a way to do it.”_

Ignis barely heard the two of them talk. He was staring at this unassuming little book that had been here all this time. Its power was completely drowned out by the Scourge and he had only felt it when he got closer to it.

Since the queen’s quarters were so out of his usual way and not close to anything that held information, Ignis would have skipped them altogether. Forever.

But here it was, something that might tell him how to make the best of the cards he had dealt himself.

* * *

Ignis Scientia had come to Insomnia barely able to stand and keep himself from collapsing in exhaustion. He had come here as traitor, clinging onto a faint silver thread of hope wrapped in fear.

Ignis Scientia fled Insomnia with his heart wildly hammering in his chest. He fled as a thief, effectively, a thief who had stolen from a malevolent entity that sought to destroy the world.

The notebook had not offered much at first. Page after page, mentioning Pitioss over and over, explaining what a pilgrim seeking entrance would have to do. Most of it had been written in ink, had often faded to near unreadability. But the final page turned out to be rather strange. It had been taped in and written in nearly faded pencil, but the handwriting was the same as Queen Aulea’s documents in her room had shown. But rather than the neat, tidy handwriting he had seen in the room, it had been unusually messy. She had likely written it towards the end of her life, meaning that she had done so in a hurry.

It had been an apology for not being able to speak any longer first and foremost. She mentioned it was only a theory, one she was not confident enough to present to Regis. But he had told her about the whole Chosen King nonsense, how he feared that maybe Noctis would be the one. Their Noctis. She had hope that the boy would be spared that fate.

“But maybe,” she had written, “there is a way to keep him from dying if he turns out to be the Chosen. It would require him to know, would require the Oracle to know, and someone else to find Pitioss and claim what waits at the end.”

Ignis couldn’t turn back and undo what he had done. He had killed those Niffs, not with his own hands but through the Daemons he had controlled. And even though it had not been his intention, they had still died and he had felt nothing. Would have continued feeling nothing if Iris and Prompto hadn’t arrived. He couldn’t go back in time and undo his angry attack on Cor. There would be consequences for his actions down the line, but Ignis did not care about that right now. Let them execute him when the sun shone again; he finally had something that might work. If he failed, Noctis would be dead and he could face that execution under Niff law with dignity—because without Noctis this world had no point. But right now, he still had the chance to develop that theory into a proper experiment, something that could save the Chosen.

Thus he made his way through the city in a hurry, always keeping a lookout for Ardyn. But the man remained conspicuously absent even as Ignis hijacked a car to get away faster. The Ring of the Lucii and the notebook were in his pockets, the car had just about enough fuel to get him into Duscae in a single madman drive and he would have to walk the rest.

Noctis had banished him from the Armiger; but anyone could dispel themselves if they wanted to cut ties. He hadn’t back then, unable to get rid of it because it had been so integral to him.

Ignis almost carefully reached for the thread that bound him to Ardyn when the car finally sputtered out somewhere past the former roadblock. Put a hand on it, felt a strange quiver go through his body.

He cut the connection.

All he could do right now was walk forwards until he reached Lestallum.


	42. VERSE 2 - The Learning Curve I Never Wanted

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> now, one thing i gotta bring to your attention  
> as you might know/remember, chapters have a different writing style depending on the main character.  
> ARDYNCHAPTERS; Ignis and his proper punctuation and some-such chapters, in second person; noctis and his all lowercase sometimes plural chapters
> 
> This Time Around  
> there's a new one added to the mix. Everything Capitalised No Punctuation First Person  
> as for which character that is? easy enough to guess, but without further ado,

“Something about this stinks.”

He watched her jab the weapon into the dry ground. They’d been staring at the river for a while, and had both reached the same conclusion. Somewhere further down the river… whatever awaited them there, it couldn’t be good. This river still had just about enough water to fully submerge some Daemons that had decided to stay in the water. Most others had run dry and Lestallum relied on water reserves and other methods of acquiring it.

Of all people that had to go missing, it had been Cor Leonis. It was absolutely no secret that much of Lestallum depended on the man and his experience in the field. He had already been a legend, the Immortal, but ever since darkness had fallen and he had completely dropped any titles and helped just as much as any other person it had only made him someone the people admired even more. It was strange to see a man who had seen so many bad things be so humble—humble enough to tolerate, no, encourage a young man who clearly hated him with all his being. Not that Loqi was out in the field looking for the Marshal.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Someone’s going to be bearer of bad news, I presume.”

“Like, normally I’m the first to tell the doomsday-sayers to fuck off, and I’d be pushing you into the water for that, but… yeah. Something’s off, and I don’t like it.”

Considering that before darkness she had kind of hated him, just working together with her now was a fantastic development in his opinion. Aranea Highwind was absurdly skilled and tactically sharp to boot—but remained surprisingly humble despite all that. She was someone Niflheim should have been proud of instead of Magitek, someone whose presence alone could and had often changed the tide of battle. But instead of using Aranea and her undeniable charisma and skill they wasted it on having her mercenaries retrieve more Daemons. Not that Ravus had considered it much either until she had turned out to be the only person who answered his call.

“Mind switchin’ on a light, prince?”

“First, I have not been called a prince in nearly thirteen years; quit it. Second, I am not a lighter,” he said with a sigh before stretching out a hand.

Ravus was not particularly good at it. This power had always been out of his reach, lodged firmly in his blood but in a way that he couldn’t call upon it. Being a descendant of Oracles meant that he was stronger than the average person—much like the Amicitias were technically stronger than him—but since he was a male descendant there was absolutely nothing he could do nothing that the women of his family could command. But ever since Lunafreya’s last stand in Altissia, the world had crumbled and fallen apart at the seams. Former Glaives and members of the Crownsguard awoke powers that had died together with King Regis. Before Lestallum they had often not met with the new king; the Glaives especially not. But ever since Altissia, those people were once more able to call upon weapons and elemental magic. Ravus, on the other hand, had found himself shaking with cold for a few days. Lunafreya’s actions had awoken their family’s power within him.

Magical light was cold, deathly cold. Metallic, some would say.

A spark lit up his palm, and Aranea stared at it for a moment.

“Good, you’re getting better at least.” She pointed at the river. “Further down, I suppose? It’s gone back a lot, so there might be something in the former riverbed.”

“You’re the captain, captain, just tell me where to go.”

They had agreed to drop the formalities between the two of them. Ravus and Aranea were a Niff and a Tenebraen rather than a Commodore and the former Prince of Tenebrae turned Niflheim’s High Commander. Aranea had joked about them being part of the same band of mercenaries that worked for Lestallum now—and Ravus had reminded her that he had technically bought her services. In the end, they had settled on simply working together for as long as they could. He enjoyed her company, and with the Niffs around he no longer felt like he stuck out like a sore thumb. Aranea likely felt the same.

She rolled her eyes as they continued walking along the river. “Get your mind out of the gutter, High Commander. We’re on a serious mission here.”

Ravus nodded. Of course they were.

But his gut feeling usually proved true. He had been uncomfortable around Ardyn before he had even been introduced to the man; had managed to keep a squad from marching into certain death by ordering them to retreat before the sun set; had known that if he let Lunafreya go she would not be returning. He had so sincerely hoped that the latter would not be happening, but in the end… it had come to pass. And now that Marshal Leonis was gone like that….

“Oi, Ravus! Mind out of the gutter!”

He looked at her—he’d been keeping an eye out for Daemons, but there were only minor ones that avoided sources of light out here.

“Yes?”

“Over there. Besides the water.”

Someone would be the bearer of bad news.

How bad Ravus only realised when Aranea hoisted up that mangled corpse and he noticed a peculiarly out of place piece of torn cloth on the ground.

* * *

“Hey. I’ve got a question.”

The Shield of the King only stopped and turned around. That blonde friend of Noctis meanwhile froze in his tracks and turned around. He looked extremely nervous compared to Gladiolus’ quiet and almost stoic strength in the wake of tragedy. But Ravus had seen that much on their way to Zegnautus already; it made Prompto interesting in some regards. But that wasn’t why he approached the two of them.

“On a scale from one to ten, how likely is Ignis to murder someone he knows?”

Prompto only shook his head and mumbled something that Ravus didn’t understand at all.

Gladiolus meanwhile pinched the bridge of his nose. “Depends on the circumstances. If absolutely nothing happened between them, a zero. If something’s going on, that raises to like a four, but Ignis is more liable to just. Inconvenience them. Break a few bones. If it’s me, well, that changes to plain violence but that’s mutual. We get along fine, sometimes we just. Butt heads. But yeah. Killing Cor? Out of the question.”

Ravus had been stewing on that for the past twelve hours. None of them really got sleep following that funeral, and Noctis had completely shut himself off again. But Lestallum was stable now and the people were only wondering why it had to have been the Marshal—back when they had just arrived here and Noctis had had to stomach Lunafreya’s death and Ignis’ uncharacteristic betrayal, Lestallum had also depended on a strong leadership. They had all decided to give Noctis the space he needed now. They all needed some time to think.

But there was something he didn’t understand.

Altissia had been a brief encounter, but it had lasted long enough to make him and Ignis come to a mutual understanding of a sort. He was ferocious in battle if he wanted to be, but there was always a precision to how he had dealt his blows that… Cor’s injuries lacked. Those stabs to the shoulder and the leg seemed unnecessarily cruel.

“Battle behaviour?”

“Straight to the point,” Prompto said, a little louder this time, “extremely focused. Tries to not inflict too much suffering in a straight battle.”

Gladiolus sighed. “You’ve noticed it too, huh.”

Ravus crossed his arms. “Unlike you, I lack some more insight. But something about that situation was fishy. It seemed rather unlikely, considering that instead of killing me when he had the chance he chose to strike a blow that incapacitated me back in Altissia at one point.”

The Shield sighed again, heavier this time. “I don’t doubt Ignis and Cor got into a fight. He’s impulsive, Cor’s… well, Cor. Drag the traitor back and have them explain themselves or whatever. But Ignis wouldn’t have killed Cor.”

“Which means, someone else killed Cor and made it _look_ like Ignis did it.”

Prompto straightened up a little. “That’s what we figured, yeah. Iris kept insisting something about him was wrong, that maybe he was being controlled. If that’s the case, Ignis might’ve snapped out of it before he killed Cor. We don’t have anything to back that up with, though. So all we can say right no, looks like Ignis did it; guilty until proven innocent or something.”

Ravus nodded, thanked them and they continued walking towards the exit for their mission.

There was no way it figure it out until someone got their hands on Ignis.

* * *

After a week, Noctis came out of his room. That alone would have been enough of a relief for Lestallum at large, but there was something about his expression as he approached them that had made Ravus grin on the inside. There was that fire that the city needed, the determination to face whatever else came up. He particularly enjoyed how Noctis almost boldly demanded to be take out of the safety zone that Lestallum had become; and when faced with a refusal by his Shield for the mission those guys were leaving on he only said that he had not been making demands of Gladiolus.

Ravus did point out that what he was going out for would likely bore Noctis to death, but still the Chosen insisted.

That was the fire that the Chosen should burn for, and for a moment he forgot Lunafreya’s death. This was precisely how the Chosen should behave—confident, strong. That was someone who could lead the world out of its darkness. But after having spent a year in Lestallum, he had to admit that it felt kind of wrong as well.

Growing up he had always believed that the Chosen would have to be a cold, unfeeling person. Someone strong enough to take down a creature that had lost its reason and to bring back the light, to boldly march to his death. After Fenestala Manor had fallen, Ravus had then projected his anger at King Regis and the surprisingly gentle Prince Noctis; no Chosen could have a man for a father who ran while others bled. Cowards only had cowards for children, and even in the rare events that those children did not lack bravery or honour then they at least were weak. His anger-clouded judgement of Noctis had been that he was weak. Weak enough that his sister had to march to her death, weak enough that the world would be swallowed up by darkness forever.

This year in Lestallum had quite changed his opinion. The softness wasn’t weakness—it was his strength. Perhaps calling it gentleness instead of softness was better; Noctis was extremely gentle and understanding despite being able to be almost ruthless when he needed to be. His mother had always told him to never judge a book by its cover; and Ravus had finally understood what she had meant.

It made the fact that he knew that Noctis would die eventually only worse. He felt like a monster, knowing that one day Noctis would march into his fallen city only to never rise again from his throne.

At several times he had considered just telling him—there were many things that Noctis didn’t know on top of his eventual fate.

The Glaives were all skittish and nervous around the two rulers. It wasn’t surprising, considering that he definitely recognised some voices. Some of these survivors had fought against their own, some had turned twice in a single night like Libertus Ostium. One had even lost their memories from what appeared to have been a fall from a high place. He could easily make them all confess their crimes, could easily point out that the late Titus Drautos that some of the Crownsguard still spoke of in high tones had been the man who had killed their king. Most of the Glaives kept neutral faces in those cases, but Ostium in particular only seemed to screw his face up every time that man came up.

But suddenly busting out a confession about any of these things without much preamble would be… ill-advised. Noctis in particular seemed to suffer under these conditions and under the destiny that awaited him; Ravus found himself unable to stack more revelations on top of the heavy weight he already carried. While there was definitely no love lost between the two of them he was starting to understand the other’s mentality a little better.

And he had to admit, he was rather good with magic. Noctis watched with interest, asked questions about since when Ravus had been able to that, how long he had been training with it.

He had kept his training sessions with the Glaives kind of secret—those were often people who had been involved in the fall of Insomnia somehow. Ravus was not blackmailing them, but they seemingly feared that he would start doing it if they refused him. He had cleared that up as fast as he could, but they likely continued thinking about it. Either way, it worked, more or less. But as Noctis watched, Ravus started to feel rather inadequate.

As it quickly turned out, Noctis had often trained with Glaives himself. He stared at Ravus’ attempts at fully controlling this ancient power of his that Luna had commandeered with seemingly no issue before the covenants started making her body fail her. Then commented on something that was so obvious that Ravus nearly wanted to claw his own face off in embarrassment. The Magitek arm. Of course.

Following that encounter, they generally went out of Lestallum together. Noctis had been honing his skills, there was no mistaking it. His first and only new Glaive so far had been Iris Amicitia against the wishes of her brother—but that girl had proven to be rather ferocious in combat. He had been on a mission with her once or twice, but he started to understand how her style had developed. Noctis acted in similar ways; like someone who expected someone to cover his sides or back at any given time. Iris made a fantastic vanguard-fighter; Noctis not so much. But he could deliver a lot, often devastating amounts of blows by the time Iris usually started swinging her weapon around. His sheer damage output was much higher even when the warping was taken out of consideration.

With the warping, Noctis was without peer. The only ones that came close to him were the older Glaives and his own companions, but even then they lost in a battle where everything was allowed. Ravus had paid a lot of attention to how old reports defined King Regis’ fighting style, but Noctis had developed rather interestingly in comparison. A fantastic wartime mage versus a furious repeated striker.

But one such day in a world without light, one that they had spent batting goblins away from their usual training point, Noctis stared at him with furrowed brows.

“You know… your stamina’s getting better and all that. Seems the thinking of it like using your Magitek arms seems to have worked, you improved but something… something’s still off.”

Ravus brushed his hair out of his face with a huff. “I suppose.”

He had a point. Something was off even now, especially when he used it in combat. There had been Oracles that had been much better fighters than healers so it wasn’t entirely unheard of—but something still felt wrong. He was fairly certain he was not meant to heal the masses like Lunafreya had been; while she had been skilled in battle most of her blasts were devastating to both her opponents and her energy reserves. Ravus did not lack the stamina for short bursts; he just was absolutely not certain how Lunafreya had done it. Noctis himself preferred storing up energy externally and using them for devastating area attacks rather than the almost eloquent-looking drawing energy out of the surrounding veins of energy and using it immediately that King Regis had used and that most Glaives still used now.

Hells, now that he thought about it, Ignis had fought like a Glaive rather than a Crownsguard. That was how he had matched the Magitek-channelled electricity that Ravus had chosen to use.

He paused. Magitek.

He stared at his hand, then at his weapon.

“That might sound like an extremely stupid question—“

Noctis rolled his eyes. “Dad used to say there’s no stupid questions when it comes to Elemancy, ‘cause it works different for everyone. Don’t think that Oracle magic’s exempt from that. So go ahead.”

“Does the weapon have an influence on spellcasting?”

It was eerily quiet for a long moment.

“I hadn’t considered that. Mostly because normally it doesn’t.” Noctis summoned his own blade to his hands and looked at it for a second. “But I don’t think your deal’s exactly… normal. You’re not just a Glaive who got the power they got through my father back. You’re… of the Oracle bloodline. And every Oracle used the trident… maybe it does have influence on magic through exposure to previous Oracles, and the fact that it’s considered a royal arm as far as I remember history lessons. So you probably have a point.” He dismissed his weapon in a burst of sparks. “Don’t quote me on that, though. Besides, we’ve got no idea where the trident went.”

“Just as the location of the Ring of the Lucii remains a mystery.”

Noctis sighed and put his hands on his hips. With his eyes closed like that and his head turned up slightly he definitely looked like a pouty child of some sort, and were this situation nowhere near as depressing to Ravus as it was, he would have let out an amused snort.

“Ravus?”

“Yes, Noctis?”

“Do you think maybe they’re in the same place?”

He did not say it, but seeing how Noctis then turned his head slightly into the direction Insomnia lay hundreds of miles away told Ravus exactly what the other man was thinking. The Crystal was in Lestallum, Lunafreya was dead—and the only two other things that Noctis needed were the Ring of the Lucii and Ignis Scientia. One was missing, and one had seemingly betrayed the crown and then killed the Lucian Marshal after already having been found hunting Niffs.

“If _Ardyn_ had the Ring of the Lucii, we would know. The trident on the other hand… I can see it being in Insomnia. Unless, of course, some sort of Messenger had gotten hold of it.”

* * *

The blessings of the Lucii were something that Ravus spent a good amount of time thinking about. He watched Libertus Ostium closely following the days after he revealed that the Mystic had approached him in a peculiar matter close to the statue in what once was the town Keycatrich. But nothing about the man was any different other than the fact that he now had this strange spell at his disposal that most people started calling ‘Gravity’. After all, it pulled nearby enemies in like gravity kept them all rooted to the ground, so it made sense. But the man himself did not change much other than the fact he went from somewhat oddly acting to a lot more confident in combat.

There were only two known royal weapons that were not housed in Lucis—one tomb that was not easily accessible, and the other was a weapon that was passed on through his family. The more days went by, the more Ravus started to wonder if he wouldn’t get his answers in his ancestral home. The home he had cast aside furiously in favour of the people who had brought ruin upon it for the sake of his misguided revenge. He did not like King Regis even after learning that he himself had been wrong just as that man had been, but he understood his actions better now.

But the thought of returning to Tenebrae after ensuring that all these people had a place to stay in with enough light to keep the Daemons out scared him. They had all grieved for Lunafreya back then, and even those who did not like him or even openly hated him had accepted his offer without much of a complaint. But returning now with the darkness as progressed as it was and with Lunafreya’s death barely more than a slowly healing wound in the minds of the people, there was a fair chance they would not enjoy having him around. Fenestala Manor was his, yes, but it was not his home right now, and if there was one thing that Tenebraens were good at—it had to be showing scorn and dislike for outsiders who did not act properly or did not believe in the Hexatheon.

“You look like something tore into your side and is crawling through your intestines right now, Commander, Sir.”

He looked up. “That’s one way to put it, Tummelt.”

The Niff noble only rolled his eyes and decided to sit down next to Ravus. This bench was normally used by people watching the sparring sessions, but Ravus had been paying precious little attention to what was going on. It looked like some of Aranea’s mercenaries and the handful Niff soldiers present were teaching the Lucian Glaives how to handle a cluster of sword-wielding Daemons, judging from the gestures they were making as they spoke.

“Feeling anything funky? Urge to consume human flesh? Light’s bugging you?”

“I am not coming down with Scourge.”

“Just making sure.”

It was one of the things that most Niffs knew but most Lucians hadn’t before darkness—that people turned into Daemons. Even now most people lived in blissful ignorance of that fact, because a panic about expunging Scourge-addled people would only lead to too many innocent lives lost along with those they were going to lose.

“Seriously, though. You do look like something is bothering you,” Loqi stretched, “Sir. Mind telling me what?”

Ravus only narrowed his eyes. “Well, I can tell you that you insisting on any sort of title is certainly bothering me, General.”

They weren’t exactly friends. There was no secret about most Niflheim-born nobles having some sort of vendetta against Ravus for being a Tenebraen, something they saw as subsidiary state intruder upon their sacred playing grounds in the army or something. That was why Caligo Ulldor had acted against orders time and time again before Ravus had had the more than enjoyable choice to kill the man before he killed the Lucian advisor back in Altissia.

But he and Loqi Tummelt got along. It was mostly owed to the fact that Aranea and her mercenaries had done a lot of work with the arriving Niffs, had helped them settle in and had even offered to settle any disputes peacefully. As it had turned out, the Niffs were capable of doing that themselves, but while there was still a lot of apprehension around, the people seemed to have agreed with Noctis saying that the survivors needed to stick together first and foremost, and the Niffs could prove or even redeem themselves. That was what these people were working on—after all, Niflheim had a lot of insight on Daemons, though not nearly as much as the other people believed. Loqi, being the only real noble from that group, was kind of sticking out like a sore spot and it did not help that he was rather infamous for his fixation on Cor.

Half the reason why Ravus had wanted Loqi to stay behind when news of Cor’s disappearance had come in had been the fact that the Niff’s injuries were still rather debilitating at times. The other reason was that he had been scared of people accusing him of murder would the worst come to pass. Loqi had appreciated that once he understood it, even if the Niff remained rather quiet about what he had done even after someone confirmed that he had been talking to King Noctis back then.

“Alright, alright. Doesn’t feel right, but sure, whatever you want, Ravus. So then, what’s eating you?”

“Tenebrae.”

Loqi tilted his head a little. “How come?”

“Come now. If you might have to return to Niflheim to check whether something was true or not, fully knowing the people there hate you for what you have done, rightfully so, would you not dread it as well?”

The Niff shrugged. That was one of the few times Ravus noticed how close his brush with death had been after his last attack on the Immortal; something about that gesture really brought out the burn scars that likely covered his entire body.

“Well,” Loqi began before clearing his throat, “I guess I get why you look like that. I really do. But have you considered taking someone else along?”

“….”

“Like, King Noctis for example. Not to keep yourself safe, but like, to show someone else what you did in Tenebrae despite the fact they probably all hate you. Whatever you need there, you can find it but still show that person that you aren’t your past actions. Same thing that His Majesty and Leonis told the people of Lestallum about us.”

Even if Tenebrae hated him, he could still show that he wasn’t just High Commander Nox Fleuret.

“You’ve got a point there.”

Loqi rolled his eyes. “Aren’t you royals supposed to be the ones spewing wisdom and we nobles the ones to blindly follow?”

“The day you blindly follow me the Infernian himself will come kiss my feet.”

“And then your ass,” was delivered absolutely flatly, without a single look at Ravus, not even a small smile or a raised eyebrow.

Ravus only started laughing.

* * *

Noctis agreed, even though Tenebrae must be a terrible place in his mind, though perhaps to a lesser degree than it was to Ravus. He had only been a meek kid who had survived one traumatic incident where everything around him burned as he thought he was going to die, and then Tenebrae turned into this inferno and once again the people he cared about stayed amongst the flames. There was a week of mentally preparing for that trip for the both of them, though they both did it in their own way. Noctis hung around his friends and close subjects a lot, and Ravus found himself once again sitting in Aranea’s sort of ratty-looking apartment that felt kind of homely to him at this point while she made the tea she’d apparently stolen from a Niff facility long before the endless night had fallen.

He and Loqi had both joked about getting her arrested for misappropriation of government-given rations, and all Aranea had done had been pointing at the door while sipping her tea very slowly. She then added that she’d given three quarters of her stash to Marshal Leonis so he could give it to other people, and she only had that quarter left because he insisted on her keeping it while also thanking her profusely for sharing it in the first place. Ever since the Greenhouse District had been built it had gotten better, but the first weeks had been rough with anything to spice water up once everything else had run out of been strictly rationed.

She hummed as she kicked back on her couch.

“Now, out with it.”

“Eh?”

“You always want something when you come here. Well, either you want it or you desperately need it. Like, collapsing on me need it.”

He gestured vaguely at her—they had agreed on not bringing up that day he nearly collapsed from what he had thought was a fever despite feeling as cold as ice to Aranea. That had been related to Lunafreya’s meddling with the world and therefore the dormant magical properties of his blood awakening all of a sudden. He’d made a vow to never fall into what Lucians called stasis after that because they said that stasis was similar to the awakening period.

Alas, she was right. “In case I come back from Tenebrae with a polearm, is there a chance you could instruct me?”

She sat up straight and narrowed her eyes at him. “Do you really think that trident’s in Tenebrae even though no one in Altissia found it after your sister passed away?”

As he had quickly learned, Aranea had been kind of infatuated with Lunafreya and her bravery in the face of being the princess of a country that had been taken over by force. How she preserved her kindness even in the face of being treated like dirt at best by the upper crust of the Niffs and like a tool against Lucis at worst as the peace negotiations had proven, even if they were a hoax in the end. There were plenty of people like that, but none else could call themselves the late Oracle’s brother’s closest friend in Lestallum, so he and her often talked about Oracle stuff in general.

He was not surprised that she immediately knew what he had been thinking about.

But still, he closed his eyes with a sigh. “I’d say there’s a small chance it is. If it isn’t, we can’t rule out that our esteemed Chancellor Izunia has it—it would be in Insomnia, then.”

“With us losing ground around Hammerhead, that’s not good.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Definitely not good. But either way, I hope we can retrieve the weapon from Tenebrae if it is there.”

“Duly noted. And yeah, I’ll instruct ya.”

“Thank you, Aranea. What would I do without you?”

She grinned. “Cry into a wall rather than my shoulder every other day?”

“That’s considered treason.”

“I’m a Niff.”

“Touché.”

* * *

He and Noctis went out of the city together one last time. Tomorrow they would be preparing by gathering their belongings and making certain that Lestallum could run for about a week without them. Ravus had spent the better part of last night trying to heal an injured Glaive who had come back from her scouting mission with a torn shoulder; her companions had dragged her back and she had not responded to the slight healing skills that some Glaives had developed. Ravus, on the other hand, was ridiculously strong in comparison.

Noctis had noted that he did look pale and maybe they should not be doing this, but Ravus had only said that he felt he needed that right now. He had a strange gut feeling, admittedly, but the thought of staying behind made that feeling worse.

They walked in silence until they stopped; Noctis had suggested going a little further this time. He also looked like something was bothering him, but neither of them really had any idea what it could be.

“Gladio said that there’d be people evacuating from Hammerhead while we’re gone. All injured. Nothing life-threatening, but that’s a precaution everyone agreed to take just in case something bad happened with Hammerhead just like with our power lines to the other outposts.”

“Good thinking on your Shield’s part,” Ravus agreed as he and Noctis both started scouting if there was some sort of Daemon nearby. They could both feel them, but it was better to check double than to be attacked when they assumed they were safe. “I ordered another trip to Niflheim. Apparently Loqi’s managed to contact a bunker with about a hundred people in it, and he’s been trying to convince them to come here rather than stay holed up and die on their own. But we also need some fresh water reserves now that we have these Chocobos the Glaives have caught in the wild recently.”

For a few heartbeats they stood still and listened, but nothing moved nearby. Then Noctis sighed heavily and sat down on the street. He crossed his legs and closed his eyes.

“Man, I can’t figure out whether I’m anxious or whether I’m excited. Maybe I’m just sad.”

“Because of Lunafreya, I suppose?”

Noctis pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yeah. When we were writing back and forth I always said I’d be coming to visit her, or get her out of there, whatever. Maybe go back with her once she made her daring escape. And now I’m going, except she’s not waiting for me there.”

He shook his head, which Noctis caught. “She is waiting—it just so happens that we cannot see Messengers or spirits that do not want to be seen or are not supposed to be seen. Not even those of the Oracle bloodline can.”

It wasn’t supposed to be uplifting. It was just a fact, but Noctis relaxed visibly either way. Ravus didn’t really find comfort in knowing that his sister was likely around and neither of them could talk to her, but then again the Lucian royal bloodline was closely linked to their ancestors. They were around—Ravus had seen them as they judged him unworthy of the ring’s power but necessary for what would come to past and cast him out with flame eating through his skin in a controlled way. Not uncontrolled as Loqi’s close brush with death had been.

He opened his mouth to say something about that.

Something nearby cracked.

Within the blink of an eye Noctis and he had jumped to their feet. It had sounded like it came from the nearby surviving bushes; a kind that they had determined could live up to five years without sunlight through some weird genetic mutation that had spread across Duscae in the last hundred or so years. It was the perfect hiding space for smaller critters—and smaller Daemons.

Noctis summoned his weapon, and Ravus put his prosthetic hand on Alba Leonis’ hilt while conjuring up a spark of light with the other. If it was a smaller Daemon then the light would scare it away unless something bigger was around.

For a moment it was quiet, but then all of a sudden there was an intense rustling in the bushes. Noctis shook his head in confusion; normally even wild animals these days reacted strangely to light because most of them were infected with the Scourge. And those that weren’t, they weren’t used to light any longer and assumed it was something dangerous.

Then they heard a grunt and saw a puff of miasma.

“Holy shit,” Noctis mouthed—it was rare to find people who made their way to Lestallum this close to the city, but it meant that they had made it. “Man, over there in the bushes, are you alright?”

The rustling had stopped and remained silent; normally not a good sign. But after that moment passed and just before Noctis leapt into the bushes to check, whoever was in there raised a hand out of it. Ravus pointed his hand forward a little so Noctis could see it from where he stood as well, and then that person in there started moving towards them.

He thought he’d see a hunter, considering how scratched and crooked that hand was. It definitely looked like it had been broken a few times in the past. Someone around Cor’s age who would be a valuable well of experience to the Glaives, the Niffs and the Crownsguard as well as the other hunters.

The person stopped for a moment, just far enough that he couldn’t make out what they looked like.

There was some movement.

Then they pushed through, and for the first time in over a year, Ravus and Noctis found themselves staring into Ignis Scientia’s face.


	43. VERSE 2 - home of silence, storm of rage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fun little things: something formatted wrong in the first chapter so copying and pasting turned the second half of that all into italics here on ao3. i fixed that on here. then the entire second chapter was in italics and i fixed that when i pasted it here
> 
> i fixed the document now but christ. i still lost all formatting of it so i'm probably gonna leave it at that. sorry first and second chapter, you look all boneless now in the document.
> 
> imagine if that had happened in the actual 230-something-thousand words document. i'd have started crying for 6 hours starting now.

He vaguely remembered that once upon a time he had been really into playing hide and seek with people. Generally the people who were supposed to teach him things suffered under the prince’s generally almost whimsical mood shifts where one day he was the world’s nicest child and the next day just gone; and even in the event that they found him he was prone to throwing horrible tantrums. It was likely a cry for attention from his father he realised a few years later; but his father barely ever managed to help with that situation.

The next best choice after the king to have a chance at pacifying an already tantrum-throwing prince was getting the prince’s future advisor. And unlike Prince Noctis, Ignis Scientia was a model child. Polite, did not speak unless spoken to, knew his way around the Citadel without trouble and both kept himself and his surroundings extremely tidy. Noctis barely remembered these times between being introduced to Ignis and the Marilith incident, an even the events that he did remember were kind of fuzzy. One thing that stood out was the fact that Ignis did have a mischievous streak that he only seemed to show around Noctis—after all, who would the prince get his little hiding spaces from when most of the time someone was fussing over him?

That changed a little after the accident but the overall situation remained the same. Noctis was the one generally seeking trouble but had no idea how to pull it off, and Ignis was the one who was crafty enough to make even the most idiotic ideas the prince had happen somehow. He also took all the blame for it always; no matter how many times he was blatantly lying. And despite having a reputation for being someone who could easily cause a lot of trouble, Ignis somehow managed to keep himself composed at any times and behaved in such a perfectly gallant way around the king that no complaint ever made the man consider firing Ignis for even a second.

There were really only two things that could get Ignis into trouble; taking advantage of Noctis somehow or straight up treason. And Ignis swore time and time again that he would rather cut his own limbs off and dance around the Rock of Ravatogh than ever betraying Noctis’ trust in any way, shape, or form.

Ignis looked like a deer caught in the headlights of a rapidly approaching truck. Despite the fact his face was scratched up and there was a scar splitting it almost entirely, he looked pretty much the same. So very similar—yet entirely foreign. For what felt like an eternity, nothing happened. It felt like none of them dared to breathe.

Just like back when he and Ignis had chosen to play hide and seek. Something that Ignis was undeniably better at, no matter how obviously and in sight he hid himself. No amount of daylight made finding his future advisor easier, and every time Noctis actually found him faster than the last time, he felt so proud of himself.

A loud clatter made the illusion of standing in the Citadel once more searching for Ignis as the sunlight poured in through the windows shatter. It was only now that he realised what the weapon Ignis had been carrying had been the Trident of the Oracle. He also dropped the two daggers he carried; one he recognised as one half of Ignis’ favourite pair of weapons but the other was a design he had never seen before.

“I surrender.”

Ignis Scientia was a person who always kept himself well-groomed. Clean enough to eat off of, as Prompto had joked once only to get a steely glare from behind the camping stove. Perfectly fitting clothes, sharp-looking weapons and always to the point on edge for just about anything to happen.

This man was leaning heavily to one side; one leg of his pants crusted with dry blood that looked like it had been there for a while. His glasses were gone and his normally focused eyes were glazed over from something. Whether it was fever or just plain exhaustion was hard to tell in the dark, but Ignis never looked like this even when at the end of his energy reserves unless he was under extreme mental stress. That mildly tortured expression he wore only got worse when Ravus turned to look at Noctis with a question he didn’t quite dare ask on his lips.

Before either of them could say anything about the unexpected surrender, Ignis staggered. Swayed.

Without thinking twice about it, Noctis moved forwards and broke the man’s fall. No matter what, that was still _Ignis._ The man who had pressed a dagger to his throat—the man who had brushed his hair out of his eyes one morning with the world’s most content expression on his face even though they were likely breaking several laws at this point only to whisper about this being effectively everything he had ever dreamt about.

Ignis was lighter than he remembered him being, and Noctis turned his head slightly to look at Ravus.

“I can guess what you’re thinking, Ravus, but could you give me a hand here?”

Ravus was checking the perimeter from what his motions looked like. He shot a few cautious balls of light into the bushes, but nothing moved. Then he walked over to Noctis and stared at Ignis for a moment. Gently removed Ignis from Noctis and then put him on the ground.

“Ravus?”

The man fiddled with his coat for a moment, then fished a phone from a pocket and tossed it to Noctis. He caught the phone clumsily.

“Go and text Aranea. B-20G-BP8. I don’t think dragging him back to Lestallum will do any good; stand watch after you do that.”

“Uh...”

“B-20G-BP8.”

Noctis did as he was told, his hands shaking the entire time as Ravus tried to discreetly check Ignis’ pulse. At the very least Ravus was… calm about it. Some Glaives who had the capacity to heal got extremely panicked whenever they were needed, and while they were skilled there was something about healing with magic that seemed to set people off. But the High Commander was the son of the former Oracle Sylva, had lived in a war-torn country and then gone to the front himself. He was likely used to worse things than someone lying on the ground breathing so faintly that it looked as if they were dead.

Noctis nervously paced around, still holding Ravus’ phone waiting for a reply from Aranea. She ha definitely read the message. But nothing around them stirred; not in the bushes, not on the streets. It was just the three of them.

He preferred keeping out of the way of healers, especially ones like Ravus. While he did not panic even when things went south, Ravus got extremely snappy if someone intruded upon his personal space too much—he only permitted three people in his personal space; Aranea, Loqi and Noctis himself. But he always shooed people who got panicky away to keep his concentration. After all, he was all that was left of the Oracle bloodline. Now that his powers had awakened there was something only he could check.

Noctis’ insides constricted entirely when Ravus leaned forwards and put his forehead against Ignis’. That was exactly the thing that he was worried most about. Everything remained still for a split second, then Ravus moved backwards with surprise on his face.

“Huh.”

He didn’t dare asking for a confirmation, but immense relief flooded through Noctis. That surprise meant that Ignis’ fever was not because of the Scourge.

That relief did not last long.

Just a moment after that, Ravus started frowning again and instead reached to check for Ignis’ pulse once more. Once he had done that, he shuffled around a little and held his hands over the leg that was covered in blood. Another dreadful moment passed like that, and Noctis looked away with his heart hammering in his chest.

“Noctis, could you give me a hand for a moment? I need you to hold him down just in case.”

Just in case there was cloth dried to the wound and removing the cloth made the wound tear open again. Noctis nodded—not that Ravus saw, he was reaching for a dagger that Ignis had dropped—and dropped to his knees on the other side of Ignis.

There had been myriad ways he had imagined a situation like this would go. Part of him had so desperately clung to the idea that Ignis had been controlled or blackmailed into doing what he had done, something that Iris agreed with after running into him. He had to admit that he had always hoped Ignis would come back at any point, even when they had decided not too long ago that they would likely have to announce him dead until someone either found him alive and well or dead and gone—if only to curb the rumours that were going about that he had killed Cor. They had not really decided on what to do yet because of his mother being around.

Ravus carefully cut off the bloodied cloth and immediately narrowed his eyes. Ignis at the very least remained unconscious, his breathing still too quiet and way too slow for someone whose face was definitely covered in sweat by now.

“Is there a chance you have a spare antidote?”

“He’s poisoned?”

The High Commander pinched the bridge of his nose. “That slice on his lower leg looks like he had an unfortunate run-in with a Voretooth subspecies a few days ago. If he came all the way from Insomnia here on foot, there’s a fair chance he came across the poisonous variant we confirmed a few weeks ago somewhere near the main street to Lestallum, still on Duscaen ground. It’s not lethal if treated early enough, but we’ve got no point of reference here.” A sigh. “I’ll be honest, Noctis—if that was over a week ago, the antidote will do nothing and we will have to face the fact we might lose him sooner rather than later.”

He had reached for the antidote in the Armiger, and nearly dropped it when it materialised as Ravus said that. At least the man reacted quickly enough and reached over to grab it before Noctis had a chance to fumble with it.

“Aranea’s late.”

Whatever Ravus was saying right now completely passed over Noctis’ head. Everything was a blur as he heard the man uncork the flask. Even the golden sheen of him trying to close that wound after he used the antidote was barely anything more than a background event. All Noctis could do was stare at Ignis’ pale face; he noted how he furrowed his brows slightly when Ravus used that antidote. At least that meant he was alive and somehow responding to things.

Aranea arrived about an hour later, with the tires of the car she had taken screeching as she stopped it. Ravus had been sitting there with his eyes closed and a frown on his face for a while now, clearly trying to figure out something about this situation. Noctis was just glad that there was someone breaking through the silence as she jumped out of the car and called for the High Commander.

“A B-20G-BP8!? Are you fucking kidding— Oh, fucking hell, you weren’t.”

Ravus opened his eyes. “Good to see you too, Aranea.”

“Fucking hell, you weren’t kidding.”

Noctis only numbly tilted his head to show her he acknowledged her being there. Almost immediately after that, the two started urgently discussing how to proceed; Noctis himself only turned his gaze back to Ignis. Put a hand on the other man’s cheek.

The fact that he had arrived here and immediately removed his weapons could only mean one thing. Had he really been controlled by Ardyn then the man would never have left any sort of weapon on Ignis just in case he broke free at any point. Which in turn meant that Ignis had at least partially acted that way because he had meant to, which made everything he had done in the last year only more terrifying to think about.

“Gods, Ignis. What were you thinking…?”

* * *

The trip to Tenebrae was postponed, what with Ravus immediately claiming responsibility for their newest arrival.

Truth be told, it was an effort to keep it mostly under wraps. Whoever it was, people speculated for a few hours, it must be someone high up from Tenebrae or Niflheim. Some suspected a secret lover, others suspected Caligo Ulldor of all people. That last one was curbed by Loqi nearly immediately after it popped up by him claiming that if it was Ulldor he would have already personally disembowelled that man and tossed his guts into a paper shredder just for the hell of it while laughing hysterically. Gross, but it got the point other Niffs were trying to make before that across—no one liked that guy and Ravus Nox Fleuret would personally dispose of him before harbouring him even if injured.

Then the rumour that it was someone involved with Marshal Leonis’ death started going through the streets.

That was the exact moment that Noctis felt a hand clasp down on his shoulder, and he saw his life flash before his eyes. Ravus and Aranea had made a point in getting everything wrapped up with as little outside involvement as possible; Noctis himself had agreed that it was better to not tell anyone until they were certain that he would live. Only Monica knew, everyone else didn’t.

He turned around and shot a nervous smile at Gladio.

His Shield meanwhile only crossed his arms. “Noct.”

“I’m not going to listen to one of your speeches.”

“And that’s all the confirmation I ever needed, thank you very much.” He pinched the bridge of his nose with a heavy sigh. “And I reckon you’re not going to initiate any sort of treason protocol.”

“My past with him all aside; initiating a treason protocol against an unconscious man who might be on the brink of death? We’re Lucians, not monsters.”

According to Ravus, they needed at least a day to figure out whether the treatment had worked or not; Ravus needed to be around in the event that it hadn’t, and in the event it had it was only a matter of time before Ignis would open his eyes. A few days at best, a dance with death at worst. He was wandering the streets because it was nerve-wracking to sit next to the unusually quiet man who was likely mentally going through the hours and days following the awakening of the Tidemother back in Altissia.

He took a deep breath. “If he lives, by all means, question him. You know as well as I do that Ignis only speaks when he has something to say and has been extensively trained to not speak under pressure. You called him a pain in the ass because of that. And if he… if he dies, then he dies. Nothing we can do about that.”

Gladio huffed, but he seemed to relax a little. “Yeah, you got a point, Noct.” In the past, Gladio would have been the first to contest Noctis’ decisions. It was nice to see that that had changed and he had finally accepted Noctis as his superior despite the fact they were friends. “But what are you gonna do if it turns out he’s a full-blown traitor?”

“In that event,” he said slowly as he looked down a street where some people were talking, “we proceed as we would with any traitor. Figure out whether he’s a danger to the population or not, and act accordingly.”

Gladio bowed instead of saying anything.

* * *

The room was eerily quiet. They hadn’t really dared rifling through Ignis’ clothes despite the fact they were rather pathetic-looking. Aranea had advised him to throw them out just in case this was a hoax by Ardyn, but Noctis had decided against it in the car. The Trident of the Oracle was too valuable an asset for the Accursed to leave it with an illusion of some sort—and besides, Ravus had added, he would have seen through anything like that. The trident was the real deal, and Noctis had respectfully backed away from it despite the fact they both had a claim to it. He could do without it, he had said, but Ravus needed it. In the end, they had put it into the room where it now leaned against the wall, and on the floor next to it were the daggers. Noctis had looked at the weapon he didn’t recognise—its design was reminiscent of the royal arms, and since Ignis was already carrying one around, it wasn’t too out there to assume that he had found another.

Four days had passed since Ignis had pushed out of the bushes. No complications of any sort; Ignis was only unconscious. Ravus had said that with confidence after not sleeping for nearly 24 hours, then had gone off to crash in the nearest free bed. Since he was colder than ice, he had likely fallen into stasis; Noctis hadn’t even realised that the man had spent most of his time stitching up whatever cuts and bruises he found that hadn’t already scarred over.

Truth be told, he was dozing. The light in the room had been dimmed to begin with; people who travelled through the darkness for extended periods of time generally reacted strangely to the lights of Lestallum at first. Since Ignis had been gone the entire time and they had never really seen proper light from Insomnia, they assumed that he had lived in and long since adapted to perpetual darkness and in order to avoid him going into a panic when he awoke to light, they had dimmed them. Noctis had switched them off entirely, the only light being the electric lamp nearby from the street.

It reminded him of the time he had also waited in his apartment with the lights off, only for Ignis to push that door open with a confused expression on his face. That day kept replaying over and over in his head, but there was nothing he could do right now. Ignis wouldn’t be walking in the door, since he was the one confined to bed without any signs of showing up.

Several other people had since been filled in. Iris had grabbed his hand on the second day and jumped up and down excitedly, saying that now finally everything would get better and it wouldn’t be long until the sun rose again. And even if it didn’t, then at least it would be all of them again. Ravus had looked away, something extremely suspicious about the way he acted. Aranea, too, had narrowed her eyes.

Prompto had only nodded and said that the only thing they could do now was wait.

Noctis himself would have liked Cor’s counsel on the situation. But alas, the man was dead, and Ignis the prime suspect for the unusual circumstances surrounding his death. It definitely did not help that Ignis’ sleeve was torn.

He pinched the bridge of his nose with a heavy sigh. This was a disaster in the making. There would be repercussions of the worst kind, but all he felt right now was immense relief that Ignis was alive and not beside Ardyn any longer. He didn’t even dare imagining what direction all of this could have gone with Ignis remaining on the other side of the conflict. Whatever the outcome of this was, at least Ignis would be here instead of somewhere else.

“Nnn. Noct…is…?”

He dropped the hand immediately. Because of the sigh he hadn’t heard Ignis moving ever so slightly. One of his eyes was open a little as if even the light from outside hurt them, if his entirely scrunched up face was to be believed. But he was looking at Noctis.

“….” There wasn’t really anything he could say. He only blinked a few times, watched as Ignis screwed his face up even further.

“… Ghh.” Ignis threw an arm across his face. “… G...ods.”

He should have started screaming. He knew for a fact Gladio would have started demanding answers were he in his place. Should have been more careful just in case this was one of Ardyn’s tricks that Ravus hadn’t seen through. Instead Noctis threw all caution to the wind and gently removed Ignis’ arm from his face. Ignis squinted at him, his eyes opening a little more. He looked confused. Not confused as in starting to attack allies confused, but more stumped at the situation. Noctis cracked a nervous smile and put a hand on Ignis’ cheek.

Ignis flinched away from the touch.

“Good morning, Ignis.” It was indeed morning, though getting closer and closer to noon. Not that Ignis would know, probably. “And welcome to Lestallum.”

For a moment longer Ignis looked groggy. Then, as if he had been hit by lightning, he sat up. Looked around the room with a gasp. Put his hands on his face as if to make certain everything was still in place, then threw a fearful look at Noctis for a split moment. He saw the Trident of the Oracle leaning against a wall and nearly immediately ripped the blanket off.

He relaxed after that, despite the fact half of one of his pant legs was just gone. Kind of suspicious, but Noctis was not going to pry further right now.

“Lestallum,” the man repeated. His voice was raw—unsurprisingly.

“Do you remember how you got here?” Ravus had said that there would be a fair chance that Ignis might not remember much of how or why he had ended up exactly where he had.

Ignis only furrowed his brows, looked into the general direction of the window. It seemed as if he hadn’t even heard Noctis.

“Ignis.”

“What?” Finally he turned his head back around.

It was that very moment that something other than Ignis’ entire behaviour had been off back then in Gralea. He had looked so exhausted. But even through the exhaustion there had been something that had been haunting him even as he dragged Noctis along. He could feel that blade by his throat again, and he raised a free hand to his throat. There was no knife there right now, but it had an effect on the person he both knew and didn’t know at the same time. For the briefest of moments horror flashed across Ignis’ face.

Once again, Noctis almost wanted to cry out of relief. Ignis was not a person to feel guilt if he thought himself in the right. That reaction alone was enough to tell him that something had been extremely off for him to act like that. Something that Noctis could now ask about, since they were on the same side again.

Iris had said he had been controlling Daemons. The miasma from the bushes told him that Ignis had cut ties with the other side. And the enemy of his enemy was his friend. Or former boyfriend.

“Do you remember how you got to Lestallum?”

“… Vaguely enough.” His voice was calmer now. But after a moment he narrowed his eyes and looked back at the weapons leaning against the wall. “… They let you stay here even if there was a non-zero chance that this is a hoax developed by Ardyn and I?”

Noctis snorted. “Ravus is in the next room over, and you’re dizzy from the looks of it. I could dodge some half-aimed swipes and by the time you managed to grab a weapon,” Noctis said and the door opened in just that moment, “the cavalry would have arrived already. An hour earlier, and Gladio would have turned you into ground beef at his earliest convenience.”

Ignis rubbed his eyes and sank back down onto the pillows. “Fair enough.”

The High Commander meanwhile closed the door and blinked a few times. “Was the first thing he did complain about the security detail? Of all things?”

Ignis sneered. “If you wanted me dead, you would have struck while I was down. If you had half a braincell to act upon, of course.”

Now that was something Ignis would have… never said out loud. Noctis knew there were plenty of times that he thought things like these; generally Ignis’ gaze got colder and colder whenever someone was ticking him off. He would later complain behind locked doors, but he never once said these things to people’s faces.

A year.

It had been a year.

And whatever had happened in that year, it must have changed Ignis more than Noctis could fathom right now.

“Considering I’m not dead, someone took care of that flesh wound I dragged around with me, and there’s no weapons pointed at me right now, you either do not consider me a threat or you do not want me dead. Am I correct?”

“That would be correct, yes,” Ravus said slowly. He stood there with one hand visibly on his weapon; more a warning than an active threat. Noctis shifted on his chair a little. “Though that might change rapidly depending on your behaviour. We do have some questions.”

A deep exhale. “I assume the traitor protocol is on hold and will be initiated depending on what I answer?”

Ravus narrowed his eyes. “Sharp as you allegedly always were. Yes—that is correct.”

Noctis turned around a little. “Ravus, he just got up. Do we really have to… do this right now?”

Both older men sighed at the same time.

“Your compassion will be the death of you, Noct,” Ignis sighed out. Ravus only asked if this was really the time to show compassion for who could be a cold-blooded murderer.

That at least seemed to drain all colour from Ignis’ face, and Noctis crossed his arms. “No. We’re not doing this right now. In a few hours, yes. But like, not right now. Since he’s awake, tell Aranea we’re going to Tenebrae tomorrow, but he’s Lucian and therefore what I say we will do.”

* * *

He’d been sitting in that one place for so long that his legs had since gone numb. The flowers were definitely more comforting than any person he could think of right now; his head was a mess. Ravus was furious, so were Aranea and Loqi. Ignis insisted on being left alone after they removed the weapons from the room and made certain everything was locked and he had no way out. Gladio was asleep, and Prompto had been dispatched to help deal with the first preparations for the Hammerhead evacuation. Iris, Monica and most of the Glaives he regularly talked to were out on a scavenging mission because someone had located a bunch of resources that were still intact but the entire premises had been covered in Daemons that likely were the cattle that had been kept around there.

But the flowers at least made him think of Luna and more peaceful times. Times where everyone had been alive and everything had been better, at least somewhat.

It wasn’t until someone approached him to tell him that Ravus wanted to see him that Noctis moved.

Whatever reasons Ignis had chosen any of this for, it had changed him as a person. Not everyone would be quick to forgive him for just about anything; the Niffs in particular were rightfully furious. Good intentions did not make the actions any better, and that was what Noctis was scared of. He was scared of learning what the hell Ignis’ intentions had been and how they connected to betraying him despite Ignis’ repeated oaths that he would never do so. The betrayal itself hurt more than anything Ignis could do right now, and that was what kept Noctis’ heart hammering in his chest as he went to where Ravus was waiting for him.

Surprisingly enough, the man shot him a sad smile. “I’d like to apologise.”

“For… what?” It wasn’t as if he had done anything wrong.

“For ignoring your orders,” Ravus bowed, “but also for the fact I let my temper get the better of me. If nothing else, I figured out something while letting off steam. Spending too much time with Ardyn tends to make you act like him; so proceed with caution, Noctis.”

He shook his head. “I’ll ask him if he killed Cor, and if he didn’t then what the hell he was thinking when he did...” A vague gesture. “… any of what he did in Gralea.”

That made Ravus’ expression freeze. “… I see.”

There definitely was something that Ravus wasn’t telling him. There were plenty of things that none of the Niffs said, but Ravus as their former High Commander definitely knew more about some things than some of the civilians that just avoided looking at Noctis. He had decided to not dig into it and letting Ravus decide whether he was ready to tell these things or not, but something about him reacting like this in this moment was oddly suspicious.

The quietly went into the building, and Noctis watched just as quietly as Ravus unlocked the door.

This conversation would decide whether or not Noctis would be forced to act against a traitor or not for the first time since he unwillingly became King of Lucis. Truth be told, he didn’t particularly want to decide this now or ever—he just wanted Ignis back, no matter how the man acted.

Ignis had moved, at the very least. He sat on a chair rather than on the bed now, and he had been staring out of the locked window when they walked in. He then quietly agreed to telling the truth, not that it surprised Noctis. Ignis lied to other people as long as Noctis was concerned without even batting an eyelash, as long as politics were involved. But right now he had absolutely nothing to lose.

The first leg of the conversation was just Ravus squeezing information out of him. Something about Ignis’ mood had changed, and he half-heartedly offered what he knew of Insomnia. No, the power network was almost completely down. Yes, there likely were survivors but they had barricaded themselves off well enough to remain out of the streets. No, he had not made contact with them. No, the structural damage was likely too intense to invade the city quickly. Yes, quite a few things had collapsed in the last year even without the Daemons messing with them. No, the Citadel was intact and would be kept intact for as long as Ardyn was there, he was likely trying to keep it in as good a condition as he could for whatever reason.

No, he had been in control of himself for the most part, and Ardyn had done nothing but suggest things. Things that Ignis did because he wanted to uphold an illusion of loyalty.

Eventually Noctis raised his head when Ravus and Ignis stopped talking.

“Ignis?”

Ignis squeezed his eyes shut.

“I’ve only got two questions, really. I’m fairly sure you’ve figured them out—you’re clever, after all. But I have to… know. Did you… did you kill Cor?”

For what felt like an eternity, no one said a thing. Ignis still sat there with his eyes closed but he had also curled his hands into fists. Ravus kept himself perfectly still, and Noctis was fully aware that he was shaking. He was scared of that answer, not only because that would mean that Ignis had killed Cor; but it also meant that he had killed Cor personally, and that was about the worst part.

“No,” Ignis eventually whispered. He opened his eyes slowly. “I _fought_ him, yes, but I did _not kill_ him. That was… that was _Ardyn._ I just… couldn’t… do anything.” He stared at his hands. “I wanted this charade to continue, but… no matter how _angry_ I was, I just… couldn’t kill _Cor._ So Ardyn did the deed himself.”

That had some interesting implications, but Noctis did not dare inquire further. Ignis was telling the truth—which meant that he had not killed Cor. Whatever reason they had had for fighting one another, Ignis had not delivered those terrible blows to the Marshal.

“I just… have to know. Ignis, why did you… do any of this?”

He took a deep breath and all of a sudden the deep guilt on his face gave way to silent fury. He turned his head slightly to look at Ravus. “Does he know?”

Noctis blinked a few times, not fully understanding what Ignis could have meant with that. Ravus on the other hand seemed to know and folded his hands. “He does not.”

“Have you ever considered telling him?”

“I have, but in the end I chose to remain silent for the same reasons that Lunafreya and Mother did. Such a lot—it is too much to drop without much preamble.”

The silent fury turned into a glare. Ignis was not liable to glare at someone with such unrestrained anger, Ignis was not prone to showing his emotions like that. Right now, he was a perfect image of quiet, quaking rage. He seemed to be gathering his bearings, and Noctis would have backed away slightly if he could have, but the chair refused to budge.

“You would have kept him in the dark for all eternity, then!? As long as the world did not stay in it for longer than necessary!?”

Ravus closed his eyes. “I cannot tell what the Accursed fed you and what you learned through your own research, but rest assured that we were merely—“

“Don’t you _dare_ telling me that you were merely doing this for _his own good._ Because _no good_ can _ever_ come from keeping secrets like this!”

Ignis Scientia was not someone who got angry much. Whenever he did truly get angry, he was a force of nature. Something quite a lot darker than the usual Lucian noble; something primeval in a way. Ignis did not light-heartedly suggest torture; when he had done that back when they were talking about Caligo Ulldor he had spoken with well-controlled seething rage. He always kept himself together even when he was overcome by anger. But right now, he was shaking. He was clearly fighting with tears of fury as he sat there, his hateful gaze locked onto Ravus.

“Not something as… horrible… as that. You can’t expect me to idly sit by and let that happen!”

“Answer his question before you rightfully verbally tear me apart, Ignis,” Ravus said suddenly. He closed his eyes and crossed his arms. “I am aware. I have been thinking. But there was never the right time. But since we are at it, go ahead and tell him. I think I understand your reasons and actions now. Rather well, I would presume, actually.”

Ravus had said before that he had been so utterly angry about the lot that had been cast onto Luna that he had considered raging against the gods before. But in the end, he could not have changed anything about it.

Noctis had an extremely bad feeling when the anger fell off Ignis like a second skin and he stared at his hands in his lap.

“Right. Why I did any of this, wasn’t it.” That wasn’t a question, and Noctis held his tongue. “Simply put, because of this prophecy. Because of what awaited the Oracle and what awaits you at the end of it.” Ignis started shaking. “I thought, if only I could figure out a way to take care of him before anyone had to die for it. If only there was a way to learn how to defeat the Accursed without having to sacrifice the Chosen.”

Noctis held his breath.

“I was an idiot. All I did was...” Ignis closed his eyes with a pained expression on his face. “All I did was cause more trouble than it was ever worth it. I acted upon wrath once I learned that I had been raised to take the throne or help guide the country once the prophecy came to pass.”

Noctis didn’t know how to feel. Truth be told, he felt nothing. The prophecy said that he needed to die for it? Suddenly so many puzzle pieces fell into place; why his father had always seemed so sad around the gallery, why everyone let his inabilities to lead slide except for Ignis himself. Something had always felt off about the way some people treated him or how they reacted when it came to the prophecy and whenever Noctis voiced concern about it. Luna had always smiled her bright but somehow sad smiles when it came to that. Gentiana had treated him as if he had been made of glass, and though he barely remembered her, Oracle Sylva had always looked so very crestfallen whenever she was alone with him. The gods had all been quiet and had accepted his resolve; the raging Leviathan had said that perhaps he did have the strength, the silent Titan had looked at him with something strangely upset in his eyes, the stalwart Ramuh had always seemed like he was shielding Noctis from something but always felt guilty about it.

But what was perhaps worse than learning this was the fact that Ignis now sat there with his eyes open and tears streaming down his face as he stared at Ravus.

“I’ve been a fucking hateful bastard for the last year, and nearly killed myself through my idiocy. I got the Marshal killed. No matter how much I twist or turn it, my control over or lack thereof killed those Niffs Ardyn told me to hunt down. Hells, if this had gone on without me figuring out something, I would have directed my anger at you, now that I think about it. I’m furious. I’m absolutely furious that no one ever told me, that no one ever told him. But judge me as you will—I found what I was looking for.”

“Wait,” Ravus said after having remained silent the entire time, “hold on. You what?”

Ignis cracked one of his rare grins while there were still tears streaming down his face. “Doesn’t excuse my decisions and actions, not in the slightest. I’ll let you be the judges of that when it’s all said and done—but I did find a theory on how to vanquish the Scourge and still have Noctis walk away from the throne alive.”


	44. VERSE 2 - Your guilt in the eyes of the gods.

He handed the notebook over without much of a fanfare once he stopped crying. Truth be told, Ignis was rather tired—likely related to the whole getting ambushed by a group of Scourge-addled Voreteeth on the move and getting injured then. Ravus had said that those things lived close to Hammerhead, but Ignis must have been caught in their sudden migration to Cleigne; they were likely drawn in by the light of Lestallum. Despite the fact that Daemons feared light they seemed to gravitate towards it while keeping a respectful distance.

Ravus quietly looked through the notebook while Noctis said nothing at all. What felt like half an hour passed like this with Ignis slowly nodding off.

Something about being close to Noctis again made him relax; he’d spent the last year almost entirely on edge. Varying degrees of on edge. He still hated the fact that he had let himself relax into Ardyn’s grip that day where he had fled the battlefield and had left Iris to her fate.

Then, almost suddenly, Ravus slammed the notebook shut. Noctis and Ignis both flinched; the man was trying his best to keep composed from the looks of it.

“A theory, yes. Nothing more. And as much as I hate being the bearer of bad news, there is no chance in hell we will gather up the powers necessary. Even if we were to find this ‘Pitioss’ and one obtained its powers, that leaves us… where, precisely? More powerful but still without a plan?”

He’d thought about that before his brain stopped working and he acted on instinct out of pain. How nothing here was guaranteed, but having it questioned out loud made Ignis cower slightly.

Even if he wasn’t Cor’s murderer the fact that he was the one who had killed several Niffs remained. Even if he promised them to bring back the sun with his own bare hands and no help whatsoever, he was still someone who should be considered a criminal. Ravus was in the right here, and Ignis in the wrong. He knew that. But part of him wanted to grab the former High Commander by the shoulders just to shake him until he threw up. Likely the part that had gotten too comfortable around Ardyn. It took Ignis no small amount of self-restraint to not roll his eyes and answer flippantly.

Ravus wasn’t Ardyn. There was absolutely no reason to be as rude as he could be while still upholding fake respect for royalty.

He threw a careful side glance at Noctis before closing his eyes with a deep inhale. “I am aware of that. Very much aware of it, trust me. That is why I...” For a moment he considered saying it as Iris and Cor had; that he had come back home. “… came here. That is why I will leave the judgement to you without any strings attached once it is all said and done. I need your help—I do not have any other options.”

Ravus narrowed his eyes. They were both thinking of Altissia, standing back to back while the soldiers and MTs seemed to have a hard time processing that their High Commander had just turned against them. Ignis could almost smell the saltwater and soot again for as long as Ravus seemed to be thinking.

“But I would ask that you do help me in the end. Afterwards, do as you wish.”

Noctis looked like he wanted to say something, but Ravus raised a hand to keep him quiet as he thought.

“ _That damned knucklehead,”_ Lunafreya hissed lowly somewhere in the back of his head, _“letting his sense of justice blind him just as it blinded me back in Altissia.”_

He blinked a few times.

The Ring of the Lucii was still in his pockets, had been there since he left the fallen city. He had one trump card he did not particularly want to play; if Ravus just stopped being like this then there was no need for making a show of it and handing it to Noctis in front of anyone else. That accursed ring was something more private to Noctis than the younger man likely wanted to admit—while it was the cursed heirloom of his family it was also just about the last thing he had left of his father.

But Lunafreya had a point. Ravus was letting justice blind himself. Noctis didn’t seem entirely comfortable with the situation at large and refused to speak up.

Thus, before Ravus could reach an even more knuckleheaded decision, as his late sister had put it, Ignis cleared his throat. This was a complete shot in the dark, but there was quite literally no choice left to him here.

“I understand you wanting justice before going on a wild goose chase. Since you and Noct… is…. Since you and Noctis seem to be leaving tomorrow morning, may I suggest doing it the old Sol way, then?”

Ravus blinked. Noctis shook his head. “Absolutely not, we can’t just—“

“No, he has a point.” The High Commander seemed to be thinking again, but avoided looking at either person in the room now. “Say we agree to his harebrained plan. The rumour that he killed the Marshal has already taken root. The fact that he is a traitor to your crown remains as well. The best way to combat either is, well, combat. Six guide his hands, as per Solheim tradition. Barbaric, but we do live in barbaric times.”

Somewhere in the back of his head, Lunafreya sighed in relief. Ignis himself barely managed to hold one back, but the situation was not defused quite yet.

Noctis narrowed his eyes and stood up from his chair. All of a sudden the almost scared aura surrounding him vanished and gave way to something that Ignis couldn’t quite place despite all the years they had spent together. A year was still a year, and something about Noctis had definitely changed; whatever this was, it was something that only the people of Lestallum knew at this point. And right now Ignis was not a person of Lestallum, wasn’t even on their side technically.

“You’re both ridiculous. First off, what’s considered treason against me and what isn’t should all be decided by me. Second, are you mad!? You’re injured! I know a king’s all supposed to care about the public image, but I’d rather not—“

He would rather not get Ignis back home and immediately lose him again. It was written plain on Noctis’ face that this was what he wanted to say, but instead he bit down on his lower lip and curled his hands into fists.

“ _Do you truly intend to do this, Ignis?”_ King Regis’ voice was surprisingly quiet compared to Lunafreya’s, subdued somehow. _“You are without access to magic of any sort. It would be skill alone, against one who could have received the gift of healing hands from Lunafreya’s actions.”_

He closed his eyes. If it was necessary he would—and he still would prefer a fight to the death over having to use the Ring of the Lucii to demand compliance from Noctis. If it only were compliance from Ravus then he would, without hesitation; but the fact that he was a traitor remained. He couldn’t just go in guns blazing when everything was as Ravus said.

“… _Very well. I shall lend you my power if necessary then; mind that it will not do more than shield you for a moment or heal minor scratches and nicks. You need only call for me.”_

Ignis took a deep breath. “Noctis... No, Your Majesty. Let me do it this way, for the sake of the people’s peace. With the Oracle’s brother and your own connection to the gods, it would only serve to strengthen the belief that Lestallum can make it through the dark while we search for a solution.” He tried to sound as confident as he could when he opened his eyes again to look into Noctis’ face. “Six be my witness, my innocence shall be proven to the people.”

He finally figured out what the strange expression he couldn’t read earlier had been. It had been a royal dignity that Noctis seemed to have acquired in the year between Altissia and now, through being forced to act as a ruler despite never really feeling up to the task. It made the room spin around him with sudden nausea, because Ignis had failed to recognise what he had been taught to be; the calm of a ruler with dignity. Noctis was clearly struggling to keep that act up, having been a normal person rather than a proper prince all his life. Ignis nearly jumped to his feet and immediately dropped into a bow. It was the kind of bow that was expected from a commoner before the king; and right now Ignis was not the heir of one of the longest lines of nobles in Lucis but just a man waiting for judgement. Noctis definitely noticed that difference in etiquette, and for a moment he furrowed his eyebrows a little.

“Very well. So be it, then. Come to the main street in, say, three hours. You will absolutely not protest anything thrown at you. You will claim that you were not under control, that the Chancellor of Niflheim turned you into a puppet but managed to cut your own strings. Are we clear, Ignis Scientia?”

That was… surprisingly harsh-sounding. Then again he could not exactly be picky about this. Whatever Noctis was going to try with this, it was not Ignis’ place to complain—thus, he nodded. “Of course, Your Majesty.”

“Good. … Ravus, a word?”

* * *

Ignis laughed a little to himself when he slowly walked through a side street nearly three hours later. He himself had taught Noctis that particular bit of Solheim history; apparently the teacher in school that year had been notorious for failing to make what he taught understandable for his students. A grave oversight from the teaching board to begin with, but when it came to Noctis’ education he was at the mercy of the school he was in—and at the mercy of Ignis, who had covered a lot more in a lot less time and retained nearly all of it as opposed to the prince. Thus, Ignis had kind of gone over history with Noctis that particular year in the Citadel, with the prince twelve and him fourteen and both of them wondering why ancient Solheim traditions that did or didn’t exist any longer were not more extensively covered. And the so-called Will of the Six was a trial that was generally used whenever nobility or clergy was involved. Grand affronts to the rulers of a certain area of Solheim were all solved like this; if the person was innocent then one of the Hexatheon would guide them to victory. If they were unjust, guilt, a heretic, whatever the affront was this time around, then they would surely be led to defeat. Not exactly a fair combat trial, but it did its job—mainly to deter people from copying the offenders, and to get rid of a problematic subject of any sort. Yes, even when the substitute ruler lost, Ignis had said back then with a smile on his face as he looked out the window at the rising moon, that was the will of the gods.

What was necessary for such a trial was someone who could speak for the gods, a high priest or something of the sort, and a substitute fighter for the ruler. All things considered, if Noctis wasn’t an idiot, he would be sending Gladiolus into combat. Ignis knew he could outwit Gladio if the fight didn’t drag on for ages. Getting stalled by the Shield of the King was a legitimately dangerous thing, especially as someone who relied on ending fights quickly like Ignis. But on the other hand, he knew how to circumvent most things Gladiolus would do to stall him.

All in all, at least it would be interesting and believable to watch.

As for the high priest, there really only was one choice. The last of the Fleurets—and as mad as Ravus seemed, he would not dare repeat an Altar of the Tidemother.

Word certainly spread fast in Lestallum, though. The closer he got the place that Noctis had said to come to, the lighter and louder it became. There were quite a few people around. Ignis noted with horror that a good chunk of those already present were the Niffs that Iris’ timely intervention had saved from his uncaring hunt. Iris herself was standing with these people, nervously bouncing from one leg to another.

Ignis scanned the crowd a little. Gladiolus was there, effectively shadowing Noctis. There were a good number of former Glaives he had seen around the Citadel before, most of them looking kind of beat up. He had hoped to figure out who carried the Mystic’s blessing if only to pass along a message, but in that pool of powers he felt there wasn’t anything that reminded him of Ardyn’s magical signature. Siblings, even if completely different, had similarities in their magical signatures. But, nothing. Just nothing.

He saw Monica, noted that Talcott was in that crowd as well. Hells, if he wasn’t mistaken, that blonde woman somewhere on the other end of the place that Noctis had curated as combat area might have been Cindy. It was notoriously hard to tell without his glasses; in the dark he didn’t really need them because everything was too dark to properly see even when he had gotten used to the dark.

His heart kind of stopped when he noticed his mother somewhere close to Prompto. He ducked away a little, trying not to stand out in the crowd; after all Noctis would be calling for the accused to step forward voluntarily.

His mother was alive? Had she been alive the whole time, unable to reach him? He’d had a feeling that Prompto’s parents would have made it out, but by any means Niflheim should have taken out nearly all of Lucis’ nobility before they proclaimed themselves its ruler. Not that he wanted his mother to be dead, far from it—it just seemed so out there. Yet there she was, and even with his sight failing him to make her out properly he would recognise her just about anywhere.

She didn’t look well.

Before he could dwell too much on that, the crowd fell silent when Noctis stepped forward.

“Thank you all for your presence. This was a rather short term development, but I am full glad to see that many of you here,” Noctis began, his voice surprisingly steady. Regal. “I am fairly certain that many of you remember the day the Niffs arrived here, all thanks to the Lady Iris’ guidance. It does not feel nearly as long ago as it has been, but ever since that day, we have proven that the dark cannot defeat those who band together even across a divide as vast as the one between Niflheim and the rest of us.”

A murmur went through the crowd, most of them agreeing. Ignis pointedly stared at the ground, making certain that no Niff caught sight of him quite yet. Aranea would know, but the rest? He had no idea and did not want to find out right now.

“We gained much—we have lost as much.” He shuddered a little, and the crowed was eerily silent now. “A lot of the progress between us we owe to… the Marshal. Who mediated between groups, who brought in those who could fight without judging anyone for their birth; Lucian, Tenebraen, Niff, Accordan. … We have speculated about why he had to die as much as you have. Today, we will get an answer. I know many of you who did not sleep through history may wonder; why were they saying that we would be holding a Trial of the Six in Lestallum?”

Quite a few people nodded. They all stuck together because they had to, but some things were just baffling even to the Lucians. King Regis had not once done anything of the sort; those that were found guilty were left to rot in cells.

“I know which rumours are floating about town. Most of you have decided who killed Cor Leonis, and you wish for vengeance. You wish to pay back the person you assume maliciously hunted down the Niffs before Lady Iris found them.”

Iris in the crowd shifted uncomfortably, but Ignis’ mind was reeling. He had assumed something of the sort, but nothing that… dire. Then again, he had been thinking precious little about the consequences his actions would have in the end. Because the end would justify the means.

How wrong he had been.

There were voices rising a little, some were very urgently whispering. Most of those seemed to be the Niffs that were scattered around, and Iris nervously bounced from one leg to the other. Noctis looked across the crowd for a moment, and Ignis could have sworn that his eyes stopped on him for a moment.

“The person you accuse of being a malicious murderer with naught but the enjoyment of killing to aid him—would this person do me the honour of stepping forward?”

And suddenly it was dead quiet. Ignis caught how some people moved backwards, staring at the people close to them. His mother frantically looked around, and Iris curled her hands into fists. There were many things he could do in this very moment, but there was only one correct answer. He took a deep breath.

He had to win whatever fight Noctis threw at him. He had to act as if he had been possessed by an entity most vile—the Accursed— the entire time, had acted not by himself and had broken free somehow. Someone who was assured of their innocence would walk with their head held high and as confidently as they could—after all, they were innocent. Ignis strode forward not hesitating a single time, and walked until he stood somewhere close to the middle. The entire street was eerily silent; no one dared to say a thing. Some were looking around, perhaps expecting another supposedly dead person to suddenly rise from the dead to arrive here.

Noctis stared at him, and for the longest moment he felt his confidence waver. He would lose, and then everything would go the same way. Escaping from Insomnia would have been pointless, and placing his trust in the hands of the gods would have been just as pointless if they did not even let him change the tide against the cruel mistress that was fate.

“ _Keep your head held high,”_ King Regis said, _“I do not think Noctis intends for you to lose here. The Six be damned—you walk with the Lucii now. As do so many others.”_

“Long did we agonise over how to proceed with whom you declared the Bane of Lestallum. We found him injured, at the end of his strength, surrendering to us without attempting to attack. We left it in the hands of the Six; for an injured man for whom death’s bells toll we cannot do anything. Imagine our surprise when he awoke—and spoke what we cannot but assume a possible truth, which leaves us with two possible truths. What you say, and what he says. Ignis Scientia.”

He straightened up further, trying to shove the sudden discomfort away. They were lying to the people. Ignis had never not been in full possession of his wits. Those crimes were his crimes; his inability to tell the Daemons to attack but not to kill and his refusal to defend Cor because of shock were truths. He had killed, perhaps not with his own hands but through passive action and direct inaction both.

Then he bent down, dropped into the bow that was reserved for commoners and king. That at least got a mumble out of the Lucians who knew him.

“You stand here before us, claiming that you were not under control of your body and your senses because of foul magic, correct?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

The murmur got louder. Some people audibly protested, their voices clearly intended to reach the king. He swore if he looked up now he would be able to see several people grinding their teeth.

“Truly long did we agonise over how to proceed with this. Whether we should leave him to Niff judgement, whether we should treat him as a traitor and punish him as such. But is he truly responsible when he had no control over it? What if he was watcher rather than actor? Could we really punish an innocent man? By the Six, we swore we would find a solution that would satisfy all.”

And all of a sudden, everyone fell silent again. They were starting to realise where this was going, and Ignis heard his own heart thump in his chest.

Judging from the noise, Noctis moved. “That was our solution, we realised. Old-fashioned, perhaps, but as we stand here as Chosen and Blood of the Oracle—we can vouch that the Six do interfere and guide fate’s hand along. Should Ignis Scientia speak the truth, then he will win this battle. Should he be lying, then he will lose. Of course, not as Solheim handled it. There will be no killing in this eternal night; should he lose he will have to face the consequences for his lies. Should he win and show that he is indeed innocent, then we will welcome him as we would any refugee from any part of Eos.”

The people had been witnesses to the aftermath of the fight against the Hydraean. Many of them remembered the weeks of endless thunderstorms, even more of them remembered how the earth shook and rumbled. Some whispered of the Glacian risen to destroy the enemies of the Fleurets. There was no denying that the Hexatheon watched over the people as long as Noctis and Ravus remained on their side.

“You will be given a weapon to defend yourself. You will fight a person chosen for this task; the first one to be disarmed and unable to retrieve their weapon will be considered the loser. Do you accept these terms, Ignis Scientia?”

Finally he raised his head. Maybe his smile was arrogant, maybe it was nervous. He was fairly certain that the people noticed how terrified and in what bad condition he actually was, and certainly a whisper rose from those that were close enough to see.

“I do. The Six guide my hand, I am innocent. I will prove such.”

It was Ravus’ time to say something, even if it was simple. “As connecting point between the Hexatheon and humans, I shall be your judge on this day.”

Ignis nodded, and the crowd turned to look back at Ignis in the middle. Surprisingly enough it was just a Glaive who hurried over to him to hand him a lance to defend himself with—considerate of Noctis to give him the weapon he had come to rely on for the last year even if Ignis was eager to part with it as main weapon as soon as this nonsense was over.

Then he caught the glint in Noctis’ eyes and his heart immediately sank.

“Very well,” Noctis clapped his hands together, “your opponent.”

Ignis’ admittedly faked confidence shattered more and more with every step that one man took forward. It was like watching his own executioner come closer and closer, not unlike watching Ardyn approach him as he choked on dust and blood in the empty streets of Insomnia. It was like glass splintering, like a shield breaking apart around the caster as the ones the Glaives could conjure up oft did.

But in the middle of the supposed battlegrounds stood only Ignis and Noctis now.

“Your opponent shall me me. ‘Tis only fair, is it not? If you lied, you are a traitor to the crown after all.” It was an infuriating smile that Noctis had on his face.

Infuriating and so very, very familiar. So familiar that it hurt to look at him and not see the normal amusement in Noctis’ eyes; nothing of the general tenderness even as he pulled another terrible trick or idea out of his pockets. This was not Noct, the prince he had grown up with and had come to love more than life itself; this was His Royal Majesty King Noctis Lucis Caelum CXIV, a complete and utter stranger who looked rather confident.

But at the same time Ignis found himself curious about this mess.

He nodded. “So be it.”

* * *

Most people considered fighting against Prince Noctis unfair. Even if he hated it for the most part, he was a skilled field soldier. Not much in the way of magic because he chose to bottle energy up and use them as explosive bursts of energy rather than traditionally as the Kingsglaive did. That made sharing his powers a lot easier because he could just toss those flasks around; Ignis himself often used these. But otherwise Noctis had a lot of stamina, chaining warp after warp together to strike precisely. The only people who were able to interrupt a warp with a well-timed grab were Cor, Clarus and Nyx Ulric, though most of the time Titus Drautos had had a lot of luck with it as well. Most other people did not risk that kind of nonsense and had to figure out how to dodge a warp from Noctis instead.

Ignis had assumed that he would be horrendously outmatched, what with how exhausted he really was. Recovering and all that. But in the year that had passed since, he started to realise now, Ardyn had really picked up the slack. And even though they had spent a year apart, Noctis’ pattern for attacking remained the same. Ignis’ meanwhile had not stayed the same at all, and after a first few blows during this fight he started to fall into a rhythm.

Honestly he was more terrified by the fact that Ardyn had seemingly been training him to handle a furiously striking warper the entire time without him realising such than by the fact that Noctis did not slow down the slightest right now. If there was one thing that Noctis often avoided then it was training his stamina for warps and phasing, especially once they were out of Insomnia. He said that he preferred fighting it out fairly, that he didn’t need to rely on magic to win a fair fight. Noctis was skilled, insanely skilled. It ran in his family, all of them mages or fighters, often both at the same time. But Noctis was more for the non-magical approach while his father relied on magic and Clarus first and on his close combat skills second.

It likely came with access to the royal weapons.

Ignis sidestepped the warp in the last possible moments, avoided having Noctis stumble into him and immediately turned to whack his arm against Noctis’ back. He hated knowing exactly what Noctis’ weak spots were because he was supposed to cover them, not be the one attacking him. But his elbow hit just a ghastly blue afterimage of the king; the man himself had landed a few steps away from his former advisor.

Were it not for the crowd he would have complimented Noctis on that; he often stumbled and fell in the training rooms and in actual combat when a warp missed like that. But there was no time for that. Noctis did not look tired the slightest while Ignis himself found it hard to remain on his feet. He was drained after having nearly died and his recovery process would be set behind for a while. For a long, horrifying moment he considered that perhaps he had been infected with the Scourge. He wouldn’t know any better if he were, but Ravus would likely have reacted differently—even the non-magical Fleurets were supposedly sensitive to the dark that an infection radiated.

He blocked the next strike, barely managing to move in time before Noctis was back with another warp. Ignis was losing, very clearly so. People were cheering—for Noctis, for his guilt to be proven by the gods. He’d lose here and that would be the end of the story, with someone else trying to solve the puzzle that Ignis had unearthed together with King Regis and Lunafreya.

He needed to focus. Noctis was faster, had more magical stamina. But he very pointedly kept on warping around, likely to show off to the Glaives. It was very flashy-looking, but those crystalline blue afterimages had to be a blow on his reserves. It took Ignis another moment to realise what game Noctis was playing.

Noctis rammed into him, and the two of them toppled to the ground with a dull thud and a groan. Ignis saw the air around Noctis spark for a moment—stasis. The crowd noticed it as well, and cheered louder; unlike a Glaive in stasis the king only got stronger for his sudden lack of movement. He struggled back to his feet while Noctis bounced back up, but Ignis made a point in keeping the lance pointed at Noctis.

He so desperately wanted to comment on how Noctis had lasted nearly ten minutes longer before entering stasis; but his last point of reference had been their last training session before departing for Altissia. It seemed like that had happened in a completely different life where they all had completely different names. So far away. Now there was this divide that Noctis had mentioned existed between Niflheim and the other nations of Eos, but Ignis himself had carved it between them. Maybe he could never bridge it.

But by the hells Ifrit resided over, he would rather die trying than having to watch it fail from the sidelines.

For a split moment he and Noctis looked at each other, and suddenly Noctis’ face lit up. Where he had looked focused and cold before he suddenly looked like he was grinning again, but before Ignis could spend too much time thinking about this they all but ran into each other. Noctis knocked him over once more, but this time Ignis was prepared. He yanked Noctis to the ground with him. What he lacked in weight and strength right now he made up for with sheer determination, and somehow he managed to turn them around. Now it was Noctis who was pinned to the ground, like so many times before in the training rooms.

Hells, he even let go of his weapon instead of trying to fight back, even though he could have easily broken every bone in Ignis’ body. Of course it looked like Ignis pried it out of his hands only to toss it out of his reach.

A few seconds passed in silence, but just as Ignis noticed a movement in the crowd, Ravus’ voice split the silence.

“Hold! It would seem that the accused is innocent of his crimes as he claimed.”

Then the crowd broke into what sounded like confusion and cheering. Ignis shook his head and got off Noctis, who only sat up with a dry smile on his face.

“Man, I just can’t seem to defeat you in straight combat. How do you keep doing this?”

Ignis cracked an exhausted smile once he noticed that Noctis’ Crownsguard were all running in to check if their king was injured.

“I guess I had the gods with me today.”

Honestly, he was just glad that he hadn’t had to call for King Regis to request help for this. He swayed a little, the world turning wildly—but there was Noctis by his side, making sure he wouldn’t fall over.

* * *

“And I’m not taking no for an answer. His well-being is my responsibility, travelling or not. I know you are capable, but this is one patient I will drag around with me before I leave him in someone else’s care.”

In other words, Ravus had decided to keep Ignis on a short leash. Ignis was surprisingly fine with that, even if he could barely sit straight after any of this. Just a few hours of sleep were better than none at all, and Ravus had all but stuffed him into Aranea’s airship. She had only raised an eyebrow at the Tenebraen but said nothing, and Aranea was a skilled flier. At least that meant as few turbulences as possible.

All in all, he was rather happy that Ravus had dragged him along. Being out of sight would give the people time to get used to the revelation that Ignis Scientia, supposed murderer of Cor Leonis and several Niffs he didn’t even know the name of had been a tool in this just as all of Eos had been for whatever the Accursed was. There were people who immediately voiced concern about his health, concern that was immediately dashed by Ravus raising a hand to tell them that Ignis had been thoroughly checked while unconscious and nothing of the sort was going on. Others exchanged glances that all but said that if he could be used as a puppet once then he could be used again, no matter how many times he broke free.

Thus, Ravus had all but kicked him out of bed and said that he was going to make certain that nothing would take over one Ignis Scientia any longer.

Which was why he was sitting here, tired beyond belief but wide awake at the same time, slowly moving from side to side as the airship was en route to Tenebrae. Noctis was also there, as was Ravus. They were both looking at completely different things—Noctis was staring at Ignis, while Ravus kept his gaze locked onto the Trident of the Oracle.

Despite his tired stupor he noticed that the High Commander was tapping his foot rather nervously. Tenebrae… what did they even want there?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the horror story of tu fui verse 2 continued:
> 
> last chapter notes i said i fixed the issue. well, no. i havent. anyway after like an hour of desperately trying to figure out what the hell is wrong i SEEM to have found it. thats why italics in this chapter are pretty sparse, i dont remember where they went because it all went to hell when i tried to unfuck the document itself
> 
> at some point it was wildly spellchecking between english and german and it changed the default font for the german to something else entirely; copying it to wordpad made it a font i dont remember while insisting it WAS the font i actually used
> 
> then it insisted it was in different languages despite nothing being underlined
> 
> anyway i seem to have exorcised it for the time being. i also now have two copies of the same document, one haunted and one not. lets hope this document story doesnt get a continuation, but stay tuned i guess!!


	45. VERSE 2 - The Duty I Shirked

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (looks at bucket list) (checks "fall into depressive hole and writers block after fixing a horribly broken document" off)
> 
> so yeah. i've been bungee jumping with my brain for a month. Hi. Sorry about that. on the bright side the document is fixed but i dunno how fast the next chapter will be because i am... considering some overhauls.  
> minor ones mind but they would slap an additional two+ chapters onto this enormous monstrosity.
> 
> thank you guys for your patience.

He all but marched through the halls that had been his childhood, his coat billowing behind him.

Fenestala Manor had been made a fortified bastion where people who had not yet made the journey to Lucis and those who refused to leave their motherland stayed. Ravus himself had nearly immediately offered it up, the people who were supposed to be his servants also jumping at it once he brought a single name into play—Lunafreya. Lunafreya would have wanted this, but his obligations as Fleuret now lay with the King of Lucis, he had argued. Surprisingly enough none of them complained despite the several raised eyebrows that sentence had gotten him back when they still had had daylight. After all, he had hated the Lucian royal bloodline ever since that horrid day that still left him waking up with his heart pounding and the taste of ash and burnt flesh on his tongue to this day.

It had taken him a long time to realise that he had not been the only one affected by it. Blinded by rage and bitter, hateful grief; and now it was too late to make up for it.

In that sense he and Ignis were not that different.

They had not been that different back in Altissia either. It had been what had drawn him to Ignis to begin with, it had been what had made Ignis agree to an implausibly excellently timed offer. Their differences had eventually driven them to clash, but now that he thought about it long and hard, he started to understand what the hell Ignis’ supposed damage had been.

Had Ravus been able to buy time for Lunafreya back then by joining with what he loathed most and betraying the one he wanted to protect, he would have done it as well. He had done it, in a twisted sense, not knowing that he was playing right into the hands of the prophecy he had so desperately tried to keep from coming to pass. He had resigned by the time he met Lunafreya in Altissia, had given up and told her that she might as well walk her path to the bitter end.

Noctis’ path had not come to an end yet, and Ignis definitely had more than one thing still up his sleeve. Marching up ahead, Ravus figured that Ignis was responsible for the Ring of the Lucii’s mysterious disappearance, but it was better to not press charges right not. A cornered man would likely lash out and not help.

Confused whispers followed him as he led Noctis and Ignis through the halls that had been his childhood home and his teenage prison. They had arrived with little to no warning, and Ravus made no point in listening to the stinging words that came along in hushed whispers once he was past these people. Noctis was pulling Ignis along; the advisor looked kind of dazed still. What a party of three they made.

The King of Light, confused and fighting back resurfacing memories of his childhood friend and the trauma he experienced here; his advisor, pale, with an uncertain expression on his marred face, a certain darkness following him around still even though he had shed the mantle of being the Accursed’s little pet apprentice; the last Oracle’s older brother who looked furious and like he would rather be anywhere else. Truth be told, if Ravus were able to have some choice words with his ancestors, he would likely be grabbing each and every single one of them by the shoulders and would start shaking them until a living person would have gotten a concussion or broken their neck.

He came to a sharp halt when he saw a bunch of people stand in his way. They were all staring right at him, and he stared back at them.

Those were people he had betrayed, people he should have protected rather than take up a sword to chase after a man who had fled through fire and flame with his son and his friend’s daughter as her body burnt to a crisp in front of her son. He realised too late that even though the Oracles were always considered the rulers of Tenebrae, it often were their spouses or non-Oracle siblings that actually led the country. It explained why there were rarely any marriages that were _not_ political engagements, because those people could all run a country while the Oracles did their duties.

He had ignored these people in favour of his own revenge on a man who had only acted as the prophecy demanded.

Ravus blinked at these people, then turned to look over his shoulder. There were even more of them behind Noctis and Ignis. Ignis tensed visibly, still not used to people being around him, and Noctis only held his arm to keep him from swaying around. But not a single of these people looked at the King of Light for more than a second before their gazes came to rest upon the supposed King of Tenebrae.

For a long moment everything was as still as the world was on a morning after snow had fallen; brilliant but silent enough to invoke a certain feeling of fear or reverence in people’s hearts.

There were so many things he could have done. He could have demanded they let him through and leave him alone; and the people would have done as much not because he was supposed to be their ruler but because they hated him. It was clear in their eyes. They were grateful for having a refuge that he had offered them in case they did not want to or simply could not make the journey to Lucis. That was about it; they hated him because of all the things he had done and had failed to do, they hated him because he was all they had left of their beloved ruling family and Oracles Sylva and Lunafreya had died in such horrible ways that Ravus could have prevented by either being there faster or _not existing at all._ It was no secret that Sylva had died to save her son, it was the final selfless act in her life and the empire had said that they were too late to prevent these rogues that had attacked Fenestala that day from going for the incapacitated prince and the Oracle jumped in to save him just as they arrived. Lies the empire had fed its people, lies that Tenebrae had not once bought but begrudgingly accepted as truth in order to avoid more bloodshed.

He could have begged the people for forgiveness and asked to be let through because he was here to help the King of Light. Could have shed real tears, fake tears, could have gotten angry.

What Ravus instead chose to do was kneeling in front of the people barring his path. Several surprised gasps told him that they had been expecting an angry outburst or an order, but he kept his head bowed and his eyes closed.

“It took me too long to understand, and it is too late for me to make proper amends now. But I swear this, I understand what should have been my duty now, and promise that should I live to the day that the sun rises once more, I will ensure that your homes will be returned to you. I do not expect your forgiveness for any and all that I have done as High Commander, nor do I expect any gratefulness for the makeshift home you all live in right now. It was my duty, just as Lunafreya and my mother did theirs. Everything I can do, I will do to ensure you are safe; and should Fenestala too become too dangerous, I will be the first to help protect you and help getting you to safety. This I… promise.”

A surprised murmur went through the crowd, but what was perhaps the most startling was the fact that Noctis, too, said something in surprise. High Commander Ravus Nox Fleuret and Prince Ravus Nox Fleuret were one and the same person, but that was something that he had never once considered himself.

“Anger blinded me once, led me down a path that made myriad souls suffer on top of those that already suffered otherwise. I should have been the one to offer succour to them just as my mother and sister did, but instead I furthered the agony. No more. No harm will befall each and any soul within these walls for as long as possible.”

He looked up now, and the people who had barred his path all looked rather taken aback. They parted, quietly accepting this and saying that Ravus and the other two were allowed to proceed. Ridiculous, considering this was in theory his manor, but it was a necessary step to ensure that no one interfered with what they were here for.

* * *

The hallway was sort of eerie. It looked just as it had the day Lunafreya and he had departed for Insomnia together. This part of Fenestala was untouched by anyone, even the former servants, as if they were trying to preserve the small amount of hope they had felt when she departed to marry Noctis. They had all hoped that the fighting would have stopped, that Lunafreya could have been happy rather than sad and locked away, only pulled out of her rooms whenever there were official statements and travels as Oracle to be made. But Lunafreya never returned to these chambers.

He stopped for a moment to look out of a window into Lunafreya’s flower garden.

A chill crept up his spine—something out there was shining amidst a field of dead flowers that had not made it through the darkness. Sylleblossoms were surprisingly fragile when it came to a lack of light; they only bloomed well with enough sunlight to get them by. But there was something that shone blue, and in that light in the distance stood a figure that he had known all his life. Something that followed first his mother and then his sister like a ghost, a spirit to haunt them—and before Ravus even knew what he was doing, he had started rushing towards the door that led into the garden.

He head Noctis answer Ignis with just enough confusion to confirm that Noctis did not remember this pathway from his childhood, but Ravus knew that this was one path he would never forget even if Fenestala burnt to cinders and he bled out on dead ground. That flower garden had been his mother’s and then Lunafreya’s most beloved location in all of Tenebrae. It had been a local legend of beauty, a sight to behold, something that all Tenebraens wanted to see once in their lives.

But a year in darkness, and the flowers had all but wilted. He tossed himself against that door desperately, fumbled with it for a moment and burst through it once the damned thing opened. He didn’t even care that Noctis and Ignis were still clearly following him.

He’d chased Lunafreya around this field so many times, he almost felt as if he was chasing her once again. But this time there would be no Luna waiting for him in her favourite spot, this time he would not be yelling at her as she refused to budge as they had had ever since their mother died. He wouldn’t be catching up to her and laugh with her as they had when they were children, when their mother and their father even had been still alive.

The dead flowers crunched under his heavy armoured boots; why he had chosen to wear the High Commander attire today was beyond him but he sincerely regretted it. This was the Niff High Commander running through the fields of his childhood, trampling all that remained of his sister—not the prince of a conquered nation running towards a woman he had known since before he could even read.

He slowed down, shook off the urge to drop to his knees and wail in front of the Messenger. He wasn’t a kid any longer, and Gentiana no longer the best friend he and Lunafreya had ever had. There was a dangerous air to her even as he wanted to embrace her, and thus Ravus came to a halt with just enough distance between him and her that they could not easily reach one another. He heard Noctis and Ignis stop somewhere behind him, but his eyes were fixated on the woman standing there with her back turned to him.

“Gent—“

“Is this the path you have chosen?” She did not turn around, and Ravus’ heart sank for a moment. What did she mean with that?

“I—“

She turned around, and Ravus’ blood turned to ice in his veins. That wasn’t the Gentiana he knew. Her eyes were bright blue, shone like blue ice in faint light. She was also not looking at him; therefore likely not talking to him either. He blinked a few times and then carefully threw a glance over his shoulders to see who she was talking to.

Ignis yanked his arm out of Noctis’ grasp and took a step forward with a dark expression on his face. “I don’t want your advice, pity, or fury.”

A moment passed. Then Ravus and Noctis both asked Ignis if he saw her at exactly the same time. Normally Messengers were invisible to normal people.

Then again, could Ignis be considered _normal_ any longer? He wasn’t certain, but Ignis ignored the two of them anyway to glare at Gentiana for longer. The silence was choking by now, the aura of this place oppressive.

“Why would you care, anyway? Messengers are not affected by choices mortals make at all,” Ignis growled eventually and crossed his arms. “But you aren’t a Messenger after all, right?”

Gentiana closed her eyes again, her pose the same as usual. There was something colder about her now other than the glowing icy eyes, but the gears in Ravus’ head were turning. Violently so. He went through each and every interaction he had ever had with Gentiana, from being a child barely able to read trying to read out loud to her, to her leaning over and talking to his mother with a small smile tugging her normally neutral expression into something _gentler._ To the time Gentiana stopped talking to him because he stopped talking to her, how she followed his sister around and did not acknowledge him any longer because he had, in her own words, gone down a path too dark for her to follow.

To the time she vanished just after his mother’s death, right around the time….

“No,” he took a step backwards and away from her, “that can’t be.”

Ignis only crossed his arms. “I’m afraid that quite a lot of things run deeper than we could have ever fathomed. The fact that the Fleuret family has been accompanied by the Glacian in disguise for centuries being one of the deeper-running things, I presume.”

Gentiana moved slightly; almost as if she were sighing. Then she took a single step forward, and nearly immediately frost bloomed under her foot. Another step. The frost turned into quickly spreading ice. It was beautiful to look at, seeing how the ice encased the dead flowers around the goddess as she revealed herself. Gentiana vanished bit by bit, her already dim colour scheme turning bright blue as the ice that had encased the dead stalks started turning into blooming ice flowers. Eventually only Shiva remained, and with that image shattered every fond childhood memory he had had with Gentiana. All of a sudden every interaction in hindsight became terrifying.

He loved this woman.

But he also feared her, now that he thought about it.

“The dark does not grant sight,” Shiva said almost gently, clearly directed at Ignis, “but it does reveal things that the light ever hid. Those who stare too deep into the abyss never return. Which begets the question… how did you?”

“None of your damned _business.”_

Ravus unfroze, horror suddenly white hot running through his body. This was a goddess. This was one of the Hexatheon, one of the six who had kept this star safe until one day they did not. And yet here Ignis was, saying things like these without a care in the world. This could end badly, very badly. Even even though he feared Shiva, the fact that he was the last living member of the Fleuret family that was supposed to be a connecting piece between the deities and the mortals remained.

He just couldn’t speak. He had never been as confident as Lunafreya in that regard; speaking to Messengers and deities was not the duty of a powerless son of House Fleuret anyway. Not a word escaped him as he watched Shiva. This was a goddess who had hated mortals, whose cold heart had opened to them thanks to the Infernian, whose heart had frozen once again after Solheim’s betrayal.

But instead of smiting them where they stood, a smile appeared on Shiva’s face.

“Bold, but not in the way those of your past were when they approached my beloved; bold but not as bold as the country I encased in never-ending snowfall for their vile attacks. I think I understand now.” She turned her head slightly but still did not look at Ravus. “I had assumed that history would go back to its given track once the apprentice made a final decision. O King of the Stone, is the assumption that you would refuse my covenant and walk the given path correct?”

Noctis certainly seemed uncertain. But there was something in the back of Ravus’ head that sounded a lot like his late mother’s voice that was telling him to not let Noctis choose the obvious answer. Something about not accepting the fourth covenant struck Ravus as odd, especially since it was one that Lunafreya had already forged. Noctis would be refusing power, power that he might have need of if they were truly going to try finding a solution to the prophecy that did not end in even more spilled blood.

Thus, Ravus immediately shook his head. “No. No, he is going to accept your power.”

And finally Shiva looked at him. Her eyes were so cold it was like staring into Ghorovas’ Rift; an abyss made entirely of blue ice that shone ominously and turned pitch black the longer one stared into the abyss. This wasn’t Gentiana, not the same woman he had wanted to return to Fenestala Manor alongside Lunafreya to ensure nothing happened to the two of them. Yet somehow this was still the woman he had often poured his heart out to, someone who knew him just as well as she knew his sister. There was absolutely no denying that Gentiana had always been more fond of Lunafreya in every perceivable way, but that was just how people in Tenebrae were, he had assumed. The Oracle meant everything. The powerless brother was only good for one thing, and that was helping ensuring that no harm befell the people and his sister that they all loved.

“Though we… though _he_ does not walk the path the prophecy has laid out for him any longer, there is no telling whether he will succeed or not. I and the… apprentice… will be doing out utmost to ensure he succeeds, but there is no way we can tell if he will. If he does not, I swear upon my family name, upon Lunafreya herself, that I will help him walk the given path to its bitter end. But for now, we ask only that you support us with enough power to persevere—for none but you weathered many a storm and came out of it stronger against all odds.”

He knew that Ignis was frowning behind him. But Noctis understood and moved slightly, likely bowing his head.

“Yes. Yes, that is what I would ask of you, Glacian. Power to persevere. The strength to walk on and see how far this new path takes me.”

The Glacian had not been fond of humanity until the Infernian had shown her that their short lives were worth something. She had lost her fondness when her beloved had been betrayed, had reluctantly taken the side of the mortals when the Scourge had been released. Ravus was not expecting a thing from her other than laughter and the question of how they dared begging for her power after everything, just as Leviathan had done in Altissia after being woken.

But Shiva merely walked forwards, leaned down a little and put both her icy hands on Ravus’ cheeks and forced him to look up at her like this.

“No Oracle had ever gained the boldness to ask such things. After our mistake with the Accursed, we ensured that none of your ilk would ever gain these powers, for we feared that it would only repeat history. How dense were we, for we created two mortal lines of humble sacrifices, generation after generation after generation—and those who watched simmered in unrelenting anger. Too late you did realise your duty to your people—too late do I realise mine. Ravus of House Fleuret, the power you seek you will obtain through training, much like your sister and your mother before you. Do not use it for ill, but one day you will gain the power you so desperately want for the good of the people.”

She let go went past him. Ravus got up and turned around, only to see her all but kneel before Noctis.

“So let my blessings go with you now, Chosen.” Shiva turned her head slightly, and looked at Ignis through narrowed eyes—Ignis also glared back at her. “That which you seek lies near the Rock of Ravatogh, though none but you are to enter. Fail, and the Chosen will walk his path to the bitter end. Fail, and your body will rot unfound forevermore. Succeed, and you might get that which you so desperately and selfishly seek.”

* * *

The Trident of the Oracle clattered to the floor of the airship, and ripped him out of his thoughts. They were all sitting on the floor in the cockpit while Aranea directed her airship back to Lucis, to the region around the Rock of Ravatogh.

Ravus turned his head slightly but did not reach for it. This was his lot now, he was supposed to hold this weapon.

But for some reason it looked better in the hands of Ignis in his mind. Thus he left it as it was, on the floor, clanging softly as the engine rumbled and propelled them towards their eventual goal.

Eventually Aranea cleared her throat. “Alright. Let me recap. You’re trying to find that ‘Pitioss’ mentioned in the late queen’s notebook. The Glacian Herself told you it was around the Ravatogh region, so that’s where we’re gonna touch down and check. Assuming we find it, and Ignis doesn’t fucking _bite it_ in there despite barely being able to stand, we do… what?”

Noctis chewed on his lips. Ravus closed his eyes. Ignis only rasped that that was exactly what they were doing and that Aranea was supposed to fly them over there and not complain.

Ravus blinked his eyes open to glare at Ignis.

The mercenary only sighed. “Good grief, you’re in a foul mood, four-eyes. Well, uh. Eyes. I guess. And what do the Chosen King of Light and the Oracle think of this bogus adventure?”

He shook his head slightly. Truthfully part of him didn’t care. His mind was stuck on the weapon that Lunafreya had lost before her death. The weapon that had passed so many hands, had even passed a Lucian king’s hands once. That thing was his family’s legacy, and he wasn’t sure whether it was right to claim it as such or not. The other part of him that was not focused on the Trident of the Oracle wanted to shackle Ignis to a bed until he had recovered. But he was just a healer, not the Oracle as Aranea called him these days.

Noctis on the other hand folded his arms in his lap and furrowed his brows.

“Commodore Aranea Highwind? Take us to Lestallum. Immediately. Ignis Scientia? You’ll rest until Ravus over there says you’re fine to undertake a potentially life-threatening venture into a ruin. No ifs or buts. This is a royal order, effective immediately.”

Ravus opened his eyes and looked at Aranea, then Ignis. Aranea’s shoulders were quaking, she was likely holding back loud laughter. Ignis meanwhile was furiously glaring at Noctis, but Noctis did not pay him any attention. Indeed, the Chosen kept his gaze firmly locked onto the floor.

And that was that story. They returned to Lestallum, where Noctis at once all but bounced out of the airship, called for Gladiolus, Prompto and Iris and told them to accompany him to the drawing board because he wanted to reinforce the stability of the power lines to Tenebrae and Accordo. Ravus was left with the Trident of the Oracle in one hand and a very furious but extremely exhausted Ignis Scientia in the other—he had to fasten his grip on the other man’s arm to ensure that he did not attempt to storm after Noctis.

“King’s orders, Scientia.”

A low grumble.

“A lot’s changed in the year you were playing Ardyn’s obedient lapdog.”

“… I know that,” Ignis sighed with a surprisingly sad tone to his voice. He kind of deflated, his limited furious energy dispersing immediately. “I know that, Ravus. You needn’t remind me. So go, tie me to a bed and leave me there to rot.”

Aranea exited the airship last, and proceeded to punch a fist into Ignis’ shoulder. “Stop being an asshole. He’s worried about you, that’s why he’d rather postpone looking for whatever nonsense you jerks are looking for at Ravatogh than risk your life finding it. And don’t tell me your life would be at risk anyway. The risk’s less intense for a healthy man than for a guy who… let’s see. Malnutrition, physical abuse, blood-poisoning, coma, trial by combat, sprinting through a manor. All of that, in like less than a month. So go and recover, asshole, and then go whine when your training starts up again.”

She marched off with that, not even waiting for a reply from Ignis. Ravus stared after her with a confused smile on his face—she knew what to say, but never really sugarcoated it in any way, shape, or form. She might as well have beaten Ignis up.

“Bloody hell,” was all Ignis muttered and allowed Ravus to drag him off.

* * *

The Trident remained on his mind for a while longer. He pondered on it for ages, realising several things as he continued his training just as Shiva had told him to.

First off, there was a nuance to Oracle magic just as there was a nuance to Crystal magic. Noctis was a master of warping, King Regis had mastered Elemancy, Ignis had allegedly been capable of infusion, some of the Glaives were better at some things or the other. His mother had been excellent at barring dark from spreading, Lunafreya had been scarily excellent at brutally using light to her advantage. Looking back at it, she had been an attacker rather than a healer.

He watched another spark of light flicker out before it ever formed into something larger than a small beam. He had been using Lunafreya’s mastery over light as a reference, but it was starting to settle in that he was just… not made for aggression. Noctis had suggested that he should use his metal arm’s overloading powers as a reference, but electricity and light did not behave the same way. Electricity was a fickle beast that seemingly only destroyed because that was what Magitek had been built for. Destruction. That wasn’t what light was supposed to be, but he was at the end of his wits and grabbed the Trident and returned to town uncertain what exactly he was supposed to do.

Lunafreya’s last gift had been this power. But he couldn’t use it in the same way that the others could. They could close small wounds now, some could even close larger cuts and broken bones, but they all had the ability to destroy. The only one Ravus had known whose power did not manifest in the destruction way had been Cor Leonis; a man who rarely called upon magic claiming that it only caused him migraines if he did it for too long.

But again, Cor had been a more than capably fighter.

An Oracle was not supposed to be good with weapons; Lunafreya had mostly learned how to defend herself and crafted her spells in an attacking way for herself afterwards. Ravus was an outlier not only from the fact that only people who identified as women had been Oracles in the past, he was also an outlier in the sense that his chosen weapon was not a polearm and he was rather efficient at combat with it.

The other thing he quickly came to realise was how incredibly messed up everything about his family tree was. That explained how there were so many powerless relatives that had died out relatively quickly, why Oracles generally had more than one child. How Shiva had all but helped groom them for the prophecy, and how Shiva herself likely was complicit in some other things that were less than savoury. Still, he could not bring himself to _hate_ her. The prophecy had not been her idea at the very least, or so she claimed. The fact that she had been around all his life remained and no matter what, he could not look at Gentiana with scorn. Shiva was a wholly different story, but in the end he came to realise it was the same as Prince Ravus and High Commander Ravus. Some people could differentiate the two, others could not. It did not change the fact that he was the same person no matter what. It was… terrifying, really. He decided to not pay attention to this as he tried to hone his skills with no one around to lend him a hand.

According to Ignis, Ardyn held a similar power to the Fleurets. Which explained why the goddess had been there and tried to keep them from walking down certain paths. So on both sides of the coin he had been manipulated from his birth onwards, but on the other side remained the fact that Shiva had seen what this power could do if handled incorrectly.

There had to be a correct way, however. One that none of his bloodline had ever achieved, and one that he likely would not achieve either.

It left him only yearning for a way to talk to Lunafreya and his mother, his ancestors he wanted to shake until a mortal’s neck would have snapped. He wanted to know their opinions on this, wanted to know whether his choice was the right one or not. There were too many questions left for him.

One question answered itself.

The question of what his power was supposed to be. He did not share his mother’s talents, did not match his sister’s raw power.

What the first and only male Oracle’s power was was similar to that of the Accursed according to the Accursed’s apprentice. Ravus realised as he sat on the ground in a puddle of blood, his white coat drenched in it and the people around him cheering loudly.

He could heal. He could pull people from the brink of death, could knit torn flesh apart in a way that left barely more than a scar where entire chunks of skin had been missing.

That was what he needed to train. The power to heal—the power to pull someone from the gates of death itself, to jolt a body in complete shutdown back to life.

He collapsed from exhaustion, into that puddle of blood he had fought for that woman’s life for. According to Ignis once he woke, he had looked strangely… satisfied. Happy, perhaps. Like he had a purpose all of a sudden.


	46. VERSE 2 - In the end, the only person you can blame is yourself.

He dragged his fingers across the pavement and tried to get back up with a hiss.

“Still relying on your _powers_ as much as you did before, eh, Ignis?”

“Shut up.”

Maybe asking Gladio in particular to help him get back on his feet had been the wrong move after no less than four lousy months under Ravus’ constant and watchful eye. Once he had been deemed healthy enough to pick training back up, he had immediately tossed himself into it with vigour.

And had wound up tied to bed for another month nursing a growing frustration as Ravus and Noctis had somehow decided to give him lessons in patience of all things after he had broken a rib as early as attempting a jump or two. Once more released from bed, he had immediately sought out the only person he knew who would handle him roughly enough without breaking every bone in his body—Gladiolus Amicitia, also currently stuck in Lestallum because of his sister being simply _too good_ at everything in the darkness. That, and he had somehow started taking responsibility for the remaining members of the Crownsguard and the Kingsglaive. He continued what Cor had started, unified the hunters and the royal guards under the term Glaives and started actively welcoming any and all people who wanted to fight for the return of daylight. Even under the intense guilt Ignis still felt, there was something that could be called _pride_ swelling in his chest after seeing his friend-until-they-butted-heads take the responsibility he had always feared somewhat.

On the other hand, Gladio handled him like he had handled a fifteen-year-old with the same angry energy as Cor had had according to Gladio’s retelling of what had happened in the Proving Grounds. With extreme prejudice. Just this time it wasn’t to protect him from his own idiot decisions. Or something. Ignis hadn’t really asked. He wasn’t going to ask, he did not want that speech _again._

Much to his surprise, Gladio actually walked over and offered him a hand. “I know what you’re thinking, Ignis, and trust me when I say I don’t give a damn. I’m trying to help you get better, yeah, I agreed to that, but this shitshow’s just kind of sad. Why haven’t you asked Noctis to let you back in on the magic thing?”

Because they were avoiding each other, plain and simple. It was a complex situation boiled down to its most basic form; Noctis and Ignis were avoiding each other like the other had the Starscourge and was about to turn into a Daemon. Once the phase of being happy about being reunited had passed, the issue had clearly crystallised itself, and Ignis wouldn’t even have blamed Noctis if he didn’t fight a different issue. It was _awkward._ He had betrayed Noctis, and Noctis in turn wasn’t sure whether he could still trust him despite everything, and the two of them were both very vividly remembering every little detail about the other.

Ignis was also fighting the urge to vomit every time he looked at a Glaive using magic more often than he liked to admit. Something about Elemancy had turned disgusting, and he knew that it was likely related to the fact he had played with dark powers not meant for humans for a little too long. That, or he thought he was staring at Ardyn’s illusions once again, and the clock ticking in the back of his head only reminded him of Noctis’ impending doom. If he didn’t get better soon, all of this was going to fall apart, and not even Lunafreya or King Regis were able to soothe his racing mind.

He grabbed Gladio’s hand and let the Shield of the King pull him up.

“Seriously man, you had it coming and all that, but you’re a wreck.”

“As uplifting as always, I see.”

“Nah,” Gladio even made sure that Ignis was standing right and overall uninjured, “just honest. You look, sound and act like a complete shithead when you don’t look like a forlorn half-drowned puppy uncertain what’s gonna happen next. Considering I’ve only been fed an overview, you can probably just call me curious, that’s why I agreed to your nonsense. But this is… Ignis. Have you gone to meet your mother once since you came to Lestallum? Have you _talked_ with Noctis, tried to connect with him again? Or tried talking to Ravus, Prompto, Iris, Talcott? I know we butt heads too much, that’s why I haven’t tried, but seriously man. Something’s eating you, and it’s not just the whole relationship with Noctis rightfully falling apart after the shit you pulled.”

“When did you turn into a life guru?”

“A year and a half changes a lot, Ignis.”

There it was again. That uncomfortable reminder that time had passed, that despite his efforts nothing had happened until a series of events led from one thing to the other. Had it gone even slightly differently, had he dismissed Lunafreya and King Regis there was no telling where he would have been now. Likely still with Ardyn, still pacing around the ruins of Insomnia like a coeurl in a cage, ready to strike and escape or to lash out just for the sake of lashing out. He had dwelt on many things while forced to stay in bed or at least not overdo it; had nearly started screaming.

“You don’t say,” he hissed instead of saying anything constructive, “thank you for reminding me, Lord Amicitia.”

The situation turned immediately. Before he could even react, sluggish reaction time due to having been forced to recover for so long aside, Gladio moved like lightning. Ignis could only let out a grunt as the Shield of the King grabbed him by the collar and yanked him forward so Ignis was all but balancing on his toes as Gladio brought their faces close together.

“I’ve had enough of this shit, Ignis. Sure, you know that broken trust isn’t regained easily, but isolating yourself like this sure as hell isn’t gonna make this any better. If you wanna kill yourself out in the field trying to save Noctis, be my _fucking guest…_ That’s what I’d be saying if I only had myself to consider here. But _you_ of all people should _know_ or at least have _some_ idea how all of this affected and still affects Noctis and your _own damned mother,_ man. I’d _kill_ to have my father here in this city alive. As would Iris. As would Noct. A whole bunch of refugees would literally turn Eos over by sheer force of will alone if it meant they got to spend time with people they betrayed or had a falling-out with in the past. Literally none of them will get a chance to apologise, speak their mind, tell those people who much they actually meant to them. You? You get that chance.”

Gladio let go, and Ignis stumbled a few steps backwards. A year and a half. Before Altissia, Gladio would have beaten him up and left it at that after telling him he had no right to act like this. When on good earth had Gladiolus Amicitia of all people emotionally matured like this? But that question had been answered before—a year and a half were a long time by human standard.

A long time to not be in contact with people, to be left alone with an entity that had given up on compassion, alone the darkness that smothered everything but anger and despair

A long time to be in constant contact with people who persevered, people who kept the glimmer of hope alive in their hearts against the odds.

“Just, like, consider your blessings for a moment. And appreciate them. Just for a _moment._ I don’t want anything more.”

He said nothing, watched how Gladio shook his head slowly.

“That’ll be all for today.”

* * *

He watched the city for a week. Brooded more than before.

This roof was definitely not meant for people-watching, but Ignis started to notice small things about Lestallum as it was. There were several other people who stuck to themselves or a very select group of people; most prominently Loqi Tummelt. Given that he was a former Niff commander or somesuch it was hardly a surprise—while there was a measure of peace and harmony under the united banner of hope in Lestallum, some things did not assimilate into the place too well. Ignis was one of the more prominent things; though people believed that he was innocent a good number of people assumed that Ardyn could easily turn him against them again. A ticking time bomb that King Noctis did not consider one, but where the king’s vigilance failed the people were going to look out for him.

Loqi in particular seemed a rather withdrawn person.

Ignis had not spent a lot of time poking around in the entire Niflheim army’s profiles, but their early encounter with that man in particular had prompted him to dig a little. Unfortunately a lot of knowledge about the situation at large had once again died together with Cor, but there was raising the dead to ask them questions. Whatever had really happened between House Tummelt and Cor Leonis that had led to anything remained a secret that Loqi guarded very closely. Just as Noctis and Ravus hid the truth about Ignis.

For the sake of integrity, or sanity, whatever the reasons—they were similar enough.

He kicked his feet against the roof and then crossed his legs. Loqi continued walking out of sight, and Ignis once again returned to watching the people in the streets.

Some others often sat on the roofs up here, all for different reasons. Some wanted space to think like Ignis himself did. Some others stared into the sky that was covered in dark clouds with particles floating about. A select few just did it because they enjoyed how quiet the full city was from up high, especially from the provisionally built complexes further in the back, somewhere behind the power plant.

A whole different ilk were the people who stayed in the streets as much as possible. Perhaps to remind them that even though they were stuck in eternal darkness there were still other people around and no reason for them to give up. Where some sought the silence of solitary in a city as cramped as Lestallum, others sought as many people as possible.

He heard steps behind him, and immediately crossed his arms. Only one person walked like this, and spending so much time on the road together had made him memorise a lot of things about the other three; memories that not even a year and a had managed to take.

“Never pegged you for much of a people-watcher, but I guess you never stop learning things even about people you think you know.”

Ignis only tilted his head to acknowledge Prompto’s presence but did not turn to look at him. He was, quite frankly, sick of getting speeches. They all had a point, as he admitted to Lunafreya after one particularly brutal one from Ravus about how exactly this kind of behaviour had led him to lose not only his sister but the people he was supposed to protect as well. He knew they all had a point but frankly this was not why he had come back.

“C’mon, not even a grumble or something, Ignis?”

“I doubt that you would leave even if I told you to go away.”

“Touché.” A laugh, and Prompto sat down next to him—with just enough space to not intrude upon what he perceived as Ignis’ personal space. “But yeah, there’s something I wanted to ask.” Prompto threw his hands up a little when Ignis turned his head slightly to glare at him. “Whoa, whoa! No need to impale me mentally, I’m not here to give you one of the token Amicitia or Fleuret speeches! Honestly, the Argentum speeches all suck anyway! And before you throw out any wild accusations, I’m not here to be your friend and sole supporter in this city either—I don’t trust you one bit.”

He sighed deeply and closed his eyes. “Yet here you sit, on a roof from which a fall would likely result in fatal injury—with me. A man you don’t trust.”

“A man I don’t trust who’s been bedridden for so long he’s barely any muscle and all intimidating talk, while I’m a trained hunter and protector of the king. Nice try, Iggs. If you tried it I’d put a bullet in your brain faster than you’d be throwing me off this roof.”

He only rolled his eyes. Prompto was definitely grinning his wide and cocky grin that he always cracked when he was confident; a rare enough occurrence but something that Ignis had noticed. Something that had drawn Noctis in like a moth to a flame. It had a certain charm, even Ignis who considered himself immune to most charms due to being a politician, had to admit.

“But yeah, I’m not here to do any of that. Seriously, I just wanted to know… what’s Insomnia like in the dark?”

Quiet. Overwhelming. Uncomfortable. Haunted.

There were many things that could describe the city, especially in stark contrast to Lestallum right now and the Insomnia Ignis so clearly remembered. Noctis and Ravus had both refrained from asking about it too much, either out of respect or because they just did not want to know about the city at large. Prompto was in fact the first and only person who really approached him to ask about Insomnia, and all of a sudden Ignis saw the vacant streets with nothing but Daemons and rubble before him once more.

“I don’t think I could do it justice,” he eventually said quietly and watched a gaggle of children chase each other through the streets below. “Desolate, I suppose. There wasn’t a single living soul in the streets. Just Daemons.”

Daemons, Ardyn and himself. The harrowing reminder that the formerly most populated city on the continent since times immemorial had been turned to rubble and dust in the wrecked streets. There would be no festivals he could sneak the Prince of Lucis to any longer. Maybe there would never be again, even if they managed to retake Insomnia and brought back the light, assuming they would both live through it. No more pulling his uncle through the streets in excitement. No more Glaives and Crownsguard in the streets trying to catch him and the wayward prince. There would only be rubble for the rest of their lives, assuming they would live to see the dawn and got to rebuild.

“A city of the dead kind of vibe?”

Ignis shook his head. “No… I suppose you could describe it as hell, but empty.”

Because the devils that had ruined everything were the Daemons and the gods alike, and Insomnia the silent testament to how neither held anything mortals did in high regard.

* * *

“ _Ignis?”_

“Yes, Lady Lunafreya?”

The room was dark, empty. Much like Insomnia had been, but this time it was his own personal hell. The dark comforted him—the dark terrified him. With the blinds drawn like this he could not see a thing in the inky, pitch-black darkness around him.

“ _I might not be able to do much being as I am, but I… I have enough knowledge about how to train when you’re still weak. I… I want to help you. I’m not as helpful as King Regis’ blessing will be for you, but perhaps if we work together….”_

He laughed in the dark. Thanked her. Accepted her offer.

And opened the blinds at least, no matter how blinding the lights outside were.

* * *

There was something equally comforting but unsettling about this. His mother and he had been estranged by lack of better words; his closest relative had been his uncle—her brother. There was no doubt that they cared about each other, but there was a divide between them that was not by any means insurmountable but definitely present. Not a wall like Noctis and he had built between each other, but a rift that wasn’t deep but very, very wide. Still, Ignis relaxed into her almost crushing embrace as she sobbed into his unkempt hair. Despite the conflicting emotions, this woman was still his mother. His mother, alive against all odds—much as he was. Perhaps the Scientia family was meant to be a cluster of contradicting feelings and people.

Whatever she was saying he barely heard. Most of it was happy, relieved, yet crushingly sad babbling. She’d lost her brother and her husband just as he’d lost his father and his uncle. Even if they had never been as close as mother and son were supposed to be, there was the fact that they never hated each other.

He only quietly wrapped his arms around her when she stopped blubbering and went straight to crying after mentioning his father and his uncle. There really wasn’t much he could say to her; there were no real words to help with that. He’d been unable to comfort Iris. Unable to comfort Noctis, Gladio or Prompto. Much as Gladio had turned his grief into the anger to push onwards without dealing with it, Ignis had swallowed it quietly and decided to push on as far as he could. When that had turned self-destructive he had no idea, but it had reached its peak when his face had been pressed into the wet stone of the Altar of the Tidemother, with Ardyn all but dangling that choice in front of his face. Die and be swept away by the tides or fate, or stand up and fight.

It was like a dream, his mother said eventually, that he was here and alive and well.

Ignis left feeling both unsettled and relieved.

Something… something about his mother had been odd, wrong, underneath all that crushing sadness and the overwhelming relief she had shown. Like something… darker. Something festering.

He really, truly, sincerely hoped that he was imagining it.

* * *

Iris treated him exactly the same. She had believed that he had been under Ardyn’s control, and now all she displayed in those few times he saw her was happiness that he was back to normal. No one had bothered correcting her—Ignis included.

Quite honestly, Ignis could still barely believe that she had managed to overcome the fact that he had left her for dead when he fled. She did not treat him differently for it, as if it had been a slip of the tongue rather than him attempting to kill her and the Niffs.

But after a month with her brother, he was at least somewhat back on his feet. Enough that Ravus said that perhaps it was time to allow him to train outside of Lestallum. With supervision, of course, Ravus added when Gladio crossed his arms and immediately volunteered despite the fact there was a dry spot of blood on the man’s face and he looked exhausted. Gladio only narrowed his eyes and said that he was not going to risk an international tragedy with the Oracle collapsing dead from exhaustion that early into his career and told Prompto to chain him to his bed.

And thus, somehow, Ignis found himself sitting in the middle of the empty street.

Noctis sat a few feet away from him, his eyes closed but his senses clearly sharp and ready for any sort of ambush. He was tense but not tense enough to betray any sort of exhaustion; whatever Noctis was thinking was clearly not something that troubled him judging from the calm expression on his face.

His throat was rather dry at this point.

At first it had been a normal training session, like any that the two of them had had in the past. Noctis warped and Ignis parried, though his reactions were slower now than they had been in the past. Back during the trial he had been high on the adrenaline of having to prove himself innocent in the eyes of the gods or so the people believed, and now there was nothing. Nothing but that wall he and Noctis had mutually built between one another. That broken trust, the shattered bond.

Ignis did not dare pick up the pieces. There was no need. As long as Noctis lived nothing mattered, and as Gladio had correctly suspected he did not care if he died in the process.

Which, admittedly, was likely part of the reason why Noctis now refused to look at him for more than a few minutes at a time.

Then for just a split moment the training session had turned into Ignis being pinned to the ground, a training weapon a hair’s breadth away from his throat and Noctis using his weight to keep him from getting out of this situation. For that moment they stared into each other’s eyes, completely having forgotten where they were and how they had gotten to that point. But that moment was gone just as Ignis and Noctis likely remembered the same situation at the same moment, and Noctis had hurriedly gotten off of Ignis and sat down where he was still sitting. He could hear the creak of metal under his shoes as he dragged Noctis backwards across the walkway, could see the completely stumped expressions that Gladio and Prompto wore and the deep frown on Ravus’ face as Noctis told them to not do anything and let Ignis go. The raised eyebrow while Ardyn wore an amused smile on his face as he followed Ignis to the elevator. The twinkle of the Crystal in the dark of that place, the chains that had been buried in the damned husk of magical rock that had sealed Noctis’ fate long before he had been born.

Ignis rubbed his temples.

He hadn’t really thought about that in particular; that entire scene was more of a fever dream than a nightmare as it should have been. Like something that he couldn’t prove had actually happened, though he clearly remembered the utter exhaustion that had seeped through every cell in his body by the time they reached Verstael Besithia. Long after he had shoved Noctis off without as much as a word, with Ardyn’s amusement overshadowing his surprise by that time.

But that scene before the Crystal must have been on Noctis’ mind for ages. That had been the last time they had met face to face, the last thing that Noctis ever saw of Ignis was… a knife against his throat.

He opened his mouth to say something.

Closed it again.

This wasn’t the time or place to apologise for this mess. Ideally he could do it when Noctis sat on the throne that his father had left vacant after his death.

Maybe he just imagined that sigh somewhere in the back of his head that sounded a suspicious lot like King Regis.

* * *

If there was one thing that Ignis Scientia was good at, then it was sneaking out when he wasn’t supposed to be sneaking out. He had been the infamous smuggler of royal heirs, had known every nook and cranny in the Citadel to a degree that no one could ever trace his paths correctly. The only person who had ever come close to it had been Cor Leonis, but even the famous Immortal of Lucis saw himself defeated in several battles of wits against the future royal advisor Ignis Scientia. When Ignis decided to do what Noctis asked of him all hell broke loose, another pathway that people had thought inaccessible by any means was busted open, another windowsill was turned into an instrument of their escape, and unwitting commoners were often turned into key figures in their little game of hide and seek.

Suffice to say, Ignis had little to no trouble escaping Lestallum. He had definitely not regained his full strength by now, but it was enough that it made making impressive leaps easier. Though there was another deep scar added to his impressive portfolio from back when the Voretooth had gotten him and nearly killed him, the leg had mostly regained its former strength. Rather than stumbling about Ignis was marching as confidently as he had in the past. Climbing and eventually jumping over the barricade was the smallest of his problems. The real trouble for about an hour had been doing so unseen. Eventually he had found a place that was deserted with no one watching and he made his escape.

The city was choking. In a different way than Insomnia was, but he felt too cramped to think properly. He needed a moment to think somewhere in solitude, and the roof of the building he all but lived in by now had not been cutting it.

He vanished off the beaten path, his weapon by his side the entire time. At least there were no Daemons scuttling about here right now; he could defend himself properly now but if he could avoid a fight for the time being he was not going to complain about it.

Ignis stopped walking and crossed his arms before starting to pace. He was definitely recovered enough to ask if he could finally tackle this place somewhere near the Rock of Ravatogh. Ideally he would be able to go on his own, but he did not particularly want to drive there. In fact, after spending some time tracing the region with a map, he’d come to realise that there was one particular part that was just barely accessible with any sort of vehicle. There was a haven that someone from the region had commented on, but in the end it was so far off the normal paths people took that no one ever really went there. Those few who did were usually rewarded with monsters stronger than their usual ilk; creatures that had grown strong in solitude along with the scarcity of resources up there near the Rock of Ravatogh. Morbols that had fed on the pools of sulphur and what not that existed up there, giant insectoids that were strong enough to build their nests in volcanic rock. Hunters that were lithe and strong enough to tear across the countryside and through their prey.

If those creatures were infected by now, there was not a doubt in his mind that these creatures were more dangerous than they would have been had the sun shone. But, and that he might be able to use to his advantage to locate whatever Pitioss was supposed to be, they would also be driven by instinct. Blindly. Intelligent monsters like that usually withdrew when their prey was too fast or too strong or showed too many signs of being just as clever as they were. Basic survival instinct was something that a creature affected by the Scourge lacked; they would chase him until either he killed them or they killed him.

The best-suited partner for that kind of mission was someone who had enough experience hunting Daemons that they knew this kind of thing as well. Iris would definitely volunteer, but her brother and technically now her superior would also immediately tell her that she had other duties that kept her in Lestallum. Prompto did not trust him, Gladio definitely would not go. Noctis and Ravus were both needed in Lestallum just as much as Iris was, though for something different. Ravus was too precious a healer in training to siphon from Lestallum for what could be a week if things went poorly, and Noctis was too important to risk his life out there like this.

The only Daemon hunter with experience he knew that he trusted just enough was… Aranea.

She treated everyone equally, was wholly devoted to the case of protecting the people, and despite her usually aloof nature he had noticed that she had gotten attached to most people in Lestallum—which included Noctis. Maybe she didn’t agree with his methods like everyone else, but out of all people Aranea and Iris were the most likely to accompany him.

He sat down on the ground. He’d have to think of a way to ask her to take him to the Rock of Ravatogh and help him find the place he wanted to find. Right off the bat that prompted problems. Aranea technically was as much of a part of Lestallum as he was at this point, with one key difference. She was still a mercenary. She bowed her head to Ravus despite the two of them seeing each other as equals they could be less guarded around. Without Ravus, for lack of better word his prison keeper, telling Aranea to do anything there was a fair chance that she wouldn’t budge.

There were several other airship pilots and their airship now, but Aranea was the one with most combat experience which would prove invaluable for a glorified treasure hunt. The only one who came remotely close in combat skill and experience was Loqi Tummelt—but Ignis saw those eyes glinting hatefully every time they came across each other. It was fair enough, Loqi was in the right and Ignis had always been in the wrong. So asking him was out of the question unless he said something along the lines of Loqi possibly being the witness to his untimely demise.

Ignis crossed his arms and closed his eyes. His senses were sharp again, sharper perhaps thanks to the time he spent in solitude with nothing but the hateful revenant of a man to keep him company. He could afford a moment like this.

It all came down to… asking. Ravus and Noctis both knew about this. That’s why Noctis had used his power as king to order a recovery before Ignis was allowed to search for Pitioss.

His thoughts were interrupted rudely. He barely even had time to open his eyes before something grabbed him by his shirt from behind and yanked him up to his feet.

“You hunt one rat only to find another,” a dreadfully familiar voice said from behind him, “and lo and behold, with the rat is yet another one. What would you call two rats in a rat trap, dearest Ignis?”

He was turned around before he could react, and all of a sudden he did not feel like he was in Cleigne near Lestallum any longer. The dead grass was cracked pavement once again, the hill he knew he was on just as distant as the sunrise itself. He wondered who the ‘second rat’ was, but dimly he remembered that apparently a blessing carried a magical signature. The second rat was King Regis.

“I… assume two rats in a trap have no name because,” Ignis whispered, held in place by a hand under his chin and the other hand grabbing him by the neck, “they’re dead. Am I right, Ardyn?”


	47. VERSE 2 - MAGIC

Magical signatures were something truly special to behold. Magic had all but nearly died out by the time he had been born into one of the few bloodlines that had still carried a trace of power in their veins. It had not by any means been a family that was supposed to carry brute strength in any capacity, but he quickly learned that it allowed him to sense things that were rather uncommon. He felt that gale that brewed in his brother’s already troubled soul, a storm in the making should the balance one day tip. Saw that glimmer of light in that woman whose pretty face belied the fact that she was guided by something rather sinister. Most magical signatures spoke of powers unyielding—but as if to keep humans back from climbing above their station again, humans were saddled with weaknesses to counter their magical strengths.

Lunafreya was a guiding light, strong, a warmth undying and a power that could not be smothered easily—and in return her body had been rather frail. Stubborn enough to carry on, but eventually her body failed her. He had just helped speed that along.

The woman Diantha, her distant ancestor, had also been a guiding light; but she had had no control over what or who she guided. Eventually she led them all to the eventual threat of darkness unending.

Regis had been a calm flame flickering, ready to turn into a raging inferno should the need ever arrive. But eventually the flicker died, sizzled, the spark gone with age and exhaustion and the fact that fate weighed heavy on his shoulders.

And Somnus… Somnus had been the wind that eventually strummed the strings of fate, driven by jealousy and a false hand that guided him along. He couldn’t even remember that runt’s face properly but he would never forget the dagger in his back.

Just as he would never forget that heavy weight of a brother he barely remembered bleeding to death in his lap.

Ardyn let out a low growl and clutched his head. Every time he thought about this for too long a horrible headache started hammering away at his skull. It was a pain that hurt more than quite literally having said skull physically pierced by something sharp or dull; even having every bone in his body broken hurt less than this damned headache he got every time he thought too much about his brother. He couldn’t remember Somnus’ face. Didn’t want to remember. But every time his thoughts got to that betrayal the lack of features on his brother’s face and the smudged details made it unbearable. It was something that he was supposed to remember with clarity, he had sworn he would remember to make his revenge all the sweeter. But time had taken the focus, had blurred the contours of a face he was supposed to remember for all eternity. The only thing he knew was that when he looked into Noctis’ face the rage came back—they likely looked similar. It couldn’t just be the black hair. There had to something other than that, something that escaped him.

A shudder went through Insomnia.

He had watched the Daemons with a mild interest because of the magical residue that flickered through some streets. Some others were untouched. Tracing that line that Ignis had left in Insomnia had eventually led him to realise that he had either left or had entirely fled the city for some reason or another.

But cutting the connection was bold. It meant that Ardyn’s ability to trace his route ended precisely where Ignis had just cut said connection. He would have expected a half-hearted or fully determined attempt on his life, not Ignis fleeing after a while.

Interesting.

It just meant that this fascinating magical trace would vanish. There had been something oddly familiar about it, something that Ardyn had not been entirely able to place. It was as if even through the heavy layer of Daemonic energy something still simmered under Ignis’ skin, ran through his blood as if he belonged to a family full of mages as Ardyn had had once upon a time. But rather than a twofold talent, one for healing and one for twisting reality, Ignis carried something… weaker. Something indefinitely more confusing.

Something that he wouldn’t be able to learn at all, considering that Ardyn was the last living person who ever learned the art of illusory magic. And no matter how clever Ignis was, while watching Ardyn might have substituted proper teaching, without the training grounds that potential would forever be out of his reach.

He decided to let the rat go.

He wasn’t a threat anyway.

* * *

The stagnant air was churning. Something in the dim streets was glowing, and it was not the odd surviving spark of electricity or a vein of power that the Lucis Caelum family used in their own city to draw upon for magical impact. The already empty streets were completely devoid of anything that moved about—the Daemons had fled this particular part of Insomnia.

Ardyn interrupted his brisk march through the streets to check if there was something or someone about to attack him. Ignis had been gone for a while, if no Daemon or other creature had gotten him he must have reached some sort of settlement by now. Mortals were foolish enough to mount an assault on that which could not be killed as long as there was something or other they could gain from it. Clearly a sunrise was something humanity could gain from attacking him right now.

But there were no humans in the streets. Nothing here breathed, he realised when the glow vanished and gave way to a familiar form that seemed almost unreal in the dark.

Sometimes he wondered if she could see in it. There was always something odd about how the Six treated the Scourge and those infected, as if they had managed to create something that not even they could stop. As if it had been created not by Ifrit but rather had been created by something that they could not handle. That infernal Crystal was a prime suspect, but Ardyn knew that even the Six bent to the will of Eos for they were guardians, not creators.

“The humble lady doth return to a city of ruins quite too much, does she not agree?”

Shiva was a guiding light much as the people she watched over were supposed to be. But she was the hand that guided the Fleurets into the snares of destiny with their heads held high, one after another, death after death. Ardyn could not care _less_ about them after what Diantha Pax Fleuret had done, but after a while even the morbid amusement had corroded into bored disinterest. Every Oracle born was another Oracle due for the chopping block, another child born for slaughter. One after another, queueing up until the end of the line that was the hazy promise of a saviour who would be born. _Eventually._ And Shiva was there, always, offering her hands to those women who would heal; then offered her hands to those left behind to continue the bloodline.

A promise of peace had turned into night everlasting, and he wanted to laugh. Truly, he wanted to laugh. But he couldn’t even remember that woman’s face as she stood behind his brother, her hand clearly half digging into his shoulder as the people let him go as Somnus’ distant and fuzzy voice declared him banished. A city without name that became the city of the sleepless, and now that night had fallen there was nothing left to find here for the goddess of ice. Her place was beside the Chosen, beside the last living member of the family she had so skilfully navigated through tragedy for centuries.

Not here in the ruins that were by any means his and had always supposed to be his.

Shiva only moved her head slightly, the head of a woman long dead. Sometimes he wondered if the Astrals ever thought about mortals with anything but disdain. That darkness that threatened to swallow all would have never been unleashed had it not been Solheim with their weapons and technology who had roused their people against the Infernian.

“Perhaps. But would the Accursed not agree that there is some fascination to be found in the ruins of a civilisation not so long past?”

He had wanted to study history once. Even though his talent for healing had revealed itself rather early in his life thanks to Somnus’ idiotic antics, Ardyn had never quite wanted to be a saviour. He had wanted to see what secrets the not so long gone civilisation of Solheim had taken with it. Even as he travelled he had remained interested in ruins moreso than people in some parts, had even dragged his reluctant protector… somewhere. The details were fuzzy. Long, long gone. There had been _something_ he had felt when Ignis had tossed the weapon to the ground. Some sort of emotion that was as distant as the name ‘Gilgamesh’ was these days. Something that had been buried in the past and remained firmly lodged in the past no matter how many times he turned that weapon over in his hands and wanted to recall a thing about this man. But much like Somnus’ face, everything about the bodyguard remained a barely defined outline with an unknown voice that did not sound _right_ despite him having no idea what _right_ was supposed to be.

History remained something that he was interested in, no matter how much he forgot. He committed to the important things. Guided the hunters to tombs long lost, guided the Chosen and the Oracle along.

“What do you want,” he growled. It wasn’t a question. He did not care—he just wanted her gone. Gone like everything and everyone else. He’d come here expecting an assassination attempt, not a lecture from a goddess who would be better off lecturing herself and her fellow Astrals.

“I came here to seek your counsel, Accursed.”

“Here’s some counsel, then: Go. Away.”

But just as he turned to leave before this could get any worse, he froze. Quite literally.

The crack of ice was familiar; there were plenty of people who preferred ice over many other things. He let out a heavy sigh as he felt the bite of sheer cold against his skin. She’d forced him to a standstill by encasing the lower half of his legs in ice with a snap of her fingers. The clack of her heels against the asphalt was deafening in the silence of a completely empty part of Insomnia, but something inside Ardyn’s brain unscrewed. By the time she had slowly walked around him so they were face to face, he had his teeth bared in a snarl and his eyes had rolled into the back of his head.

It unsettled people. It even unsettled gods. But Shiva did not even _blink_ as she stared at him with her eyes seemingly piercing him.

He rolled his eyes back and cracked his neck. Reached for hers with his hands. But just as he tried to choke a goddess who would not die from a petty attack like that, she put a finger to his lips.

Cold.

So unbearably cold.

“Would you leave history in the hand of the divine, or would you return its reins to the hands of men?”

With her finger on his lips he was unable to say anything. There was a faint layer of rime spreading across his face, an icy reminder that he was dealing with a goddess rather than simply a Messenger.

Were he able to speak, he would have had some choice words for a question this ridiculous. None of them were particularly savoury, however.

What he instead settled for when she let go of him again was a growl. “As if either choice is a good one.”

She closed her eyes with a surprisingly heavy sigh. “And as always, your answer is expected. Can the divine expect the unexpected? Is the burden of expectation what binds you and I to one path while the other remains obscured?”

He had no idea what she was even talking about.

Shiva vanished, the unspoken questions he had unanswered.

* * *

He tracked the familiar traces of magic across the countryside. Ardyn was a hunter, his prey were these unsuspecting little trinkets that some people carried around. Truth be told, he had been trying to find another altogether, but he was not going to leave this one in this hands either. The woman who carried the Rogue was a formidable enemy. Smart, swift, unrelenting. Her biggest mistake was her failure to correctly judge Ardyn as an opponent. She did overpower him, yes, but relying on brute force a lone was a fatal mistake in the end. She went down hissing and spitting, tears streaming down her face as she failed to get back up due to her cracked and shattered bones.

He crouched down next to her. She still tried to reach for him, maybe to try choking the lights out of him before she died from blood loss. But thanks to her broken fingers and twisted arms she was unable to do so and remained a hissing and spitting writhing mess on the ground. The Rogue had risen from that situation, had overcome all the odds stacked against her even if she worked from the shadows. He felt that shiver that went through the magical energy when he reached for that woman and put a finger against her forehead.

“Crepera Lucis Caelum. Rogue. Lady of the night. I have to admit, I was not expecting you to be the first I come across, but ‘tis a pleasant surprise to say the least, dearest descendant.”

Horror filled the woman’s eyes as he reached for the trinket and snatched it off her.

“De… scendant,” she choked out in confusion.

Ardyn raised an eyebrow as he pocketed the sigil of the Rogue with Crepera hissing somewhere in the back of his head. That woman was a pitiful bleeding heap but the horror was plain on her face. It wasn’t because of her impending death—he shrugged nonchalantly at her.

“Perhaps you can meet my dearest distant nephew at the gates when I am done with this world. Or tell my darling brother that you and yours so fondly call Founder King that all of this was both his fault and inevitable. Ta-dah!”

He all but jumped to his feet.

Crepera’s curses and apologies fell on deaf ears; the Accursed did not care and her chosen warrior was dead.

* * *

The closer one got to Lestallum, the more confusing that delicate net of magic traces became. Noctis stood out like a burning centrepiece of that net, a beacon of light and power that definitely walked hand in hand with divine powers. He was easy enough to pick out even from far away. But this close to the Crystal and the Chosen, those who bore the sigil of a ruler and therefore their blessings all but melted into the static noise. Sometimes he managed to pick out certain people—the Just definitely left and entered Lestallum frequently, more frequently than anyone else. Here and there he managed to feel a spark of light through that heavy mantle of crystalline magic, a spark that definitely felt out of place when he conjured up the mental image of Ravus using that haunted Oracle magic. Ardyn was not here to look for sparks and flashes and dabs of strong elemental magic or brute power.

He was here looking for a familiar gust. Somnus had to be hiding somewhere within that net. All Ardyn needed was a proper trace and he could follow that wind to the end of the world; because as strong as wind could be, magic was finite. The Accursed was not. This was a game Ardyn would win no matter how far his brother and the person he followed around like an imprinted baby Chocobo ran.

Alas, the magical net was a mess. There were hundreds of people who were capable of using magic thanks to Lunafreya’s desperate plea back in Altissia. Even though they were not as strong as the ones who had gained the favour of one of the past rulers of Lucis, there were so many of them that they added up and muted the signatures of those chosen. Above all else stood the Crystal and Noctis, blindingly brilliant and overwhelmingly present even though Ardyn was quite a way away from the settlement.

He closed his eyes and focused.

Finding something he knew existed, something that he vaguely remembered should not be that hard if he could just dim out the static noise from all the magic running rampant here. The meteorshards definitely added to the confusion, and electricity definitely added a final touch to the intense focus of powers around this city. Finding something as fickle as the wind would be hard if Somnus and his chosen partner remained in the city.

Thus Ardyn remained, hidden from plain view for a week. He learned rather quickly which ones were the more frequently leaving and returning—the Amicitia girl was followed by the Just; that Crownsguard woman by the Pious; that runaway clone of Besithia, may he rot in hell, strode in and out with the Clever at his heels; the Shield of the King stood stood with the Tall. Once or twice he felt the Warrior and the Wise but he had no faces to put alongside those.

He overpowered the man who had gained the Fierce’s favour and attempted to beat information about the Mystic out of that man and Tonitrus, but until the moment that man died they both valiantly stayed silent. Ardyn had considered crushing that idiotic token he snatched from the body as he kicked it off the cliff, but instead he pocketed it. Might as well toss it where he had left the Rogue; perhaps darling Crepera and beloved Tonitrus could have a heart-wrenching reunion in the dead husk of a city they once protected when they were alive.

There was a suspicious absence of the Conqueror, the Wanderer and the Mystic, however. He managed to deduce that someone had the Conqueror at least from listening in on a conversation between the Amicitia girl and Besithia’s little clone. Try as he might have, however, but the Mystic and the Wanderer remained absent entirely. Just once he thought he felt a fresh breath of air somewhere in the static net of magic, but it was flimsy and gone before he managed to focus on it properly.

Ardyn took a deep breath.

Sensing magic was something that not many people could do. Even the more talented people of the Lucis Caelum and Fleuret bloodlines had troubles with it—because the magic they used was not made for sensing anything they couldn’t use. Daemonic magic had sharpened and honed that sense with Ardyn, but illusory magic depended on many things. Understanding magical traces and replicating them properly for an illusion was one of these things.

He snapped open his eyes.

There was _something._ Not Somnus as he had wanted originally, but this would be interesting.

There was something dull that was leaving the magic net. Between all the brightly flaring powers that dullness stood out. He’d felt that untapped potential before, had actually managed to stoke it to brilliance for a split moment several times in Insomnia, but in the end it remained still and useless to its user. As if Elemancy had not been the right thing despite his talent; as if Daemonic magic had also not been the right match for Ignis Scientia no matter how much he dedicated himself to it.

The little rat was alive. They hadn’t actually tossed him off a cliff as soon as he had arrived either. Judging from it he was healthy; there wasn’t even the spark sting of an infection spreading through his body. Beside his dull power stood something else, something that he’d felt a hundred times or more in the last 24 hours alone. The power of a ruler of Lucis, one of the few that Ardyn distinctly remembered, too. King Regis’ power followed Ignis like a shadow as the advisor left the net of magic a little more and then stopped moving altogether.

The most logical thing to do was to leave and ignore this fact. Ardyn wasn’t here for this at all in any capacity. Logically, knowing his own luck in life, the person who had Somnus trailing after them would be leaving the city just as he attacked Ignis. In fact, Ardyn had nearly managed to snap his attention back from Ignis and dug his focus back into the magic net when he felt a familiar flare.

Energy that ran unchecked.

Ignis let his guard down.

Why on Eos should he let that little rat go? He had to admit that the ploy had been fantastically executed—he had nearly believed the little act that Ignis put on, especially after he had gone and gotten rid of a revenant like Gilgamesh. Not that Gilgamesh truly died; much like everyone else in that place he would have gotten back up by now and started climbing back to where he had fought Ignis beforehand. Ignis had put a lot of effort into training no matter how entirely exhausted he wound up, no matter how many times Ardyn stomped on his limbs to break them with brute force.

But letting him go would be like admitting defeat. Ignis was a valuable resource in a sense; even if by any means Noctis should have executed him for high treason here he was, which meant there was some value to Ignis still. Personal emotional attachments. Tactical advantages.

Therefore Ardyn did what he did best—approached people as silently as possible and then used their unawareness to his advantage.

“You hunt one rat only to find another and lo and behold, with the rat is yet another one,” he said lowly. “What would you call two rats in a rat trap, dearest Ignis?”

Because Ignis had let down his cover for one moment he had not seen Ardyn coming, and did not even remotely manage to put up a fight before he realised just _how_ compromised his situation was. For a moment there was that look of utter terror reflected in his eyes, but all things considered he once more proved himself surprisingly composed for someone who quite literally was staring his own death in the face should Ardyn desire to snap his neck.

“I… assume that two rats in a trap have no name because they’re dead.” Even though he was whispering, his voice was as composed as he looked. “Am I right, Ardyn?”

He yanked Ignis to his feet and shoved him away. The advisor stumbled for a moment and then regained his footing, not once turning away to look for a way to escape this situation.

“What, not even bothering with trying to worm your way out of this by calling me by my proper title? How disappointing.”

Ignis didn’t react to that provocation. Much like the man who had gained the Fierce’s favour he stood his ground quietly with nothing but silent determination on his face. For a moment all was quiet, then Ignis cracked a lopsided grin.

“Lies told too many times might become a truth, after all. I would rather be in the pages of history as a liar than someone who wholly supported a vengeful revenant who was supposed to be dead and buried and perhaps cherished rather than erased.”

Ardyn reacted to that provocation. He knew immediately that Ignis was trying to bait him into something, but there were some things that were just plain idiotic to say no matter the situation. He hadn’t meant to flinch slightly, but Ignis’ triumph did not last long when he saw that all Ardyn did was narrow his eyes. He yanked his focus out of the net of magic around Lestallum and instead focused his senses on that little insignificant mortal in front of him.

Maybe it had been that boldness that had drawn Ardyn in in the first place. Out of all people on this forsaken earth, Ignis had been the hardest one to read and predict. There was never a doubt that he was strong—not as strong as the boy they called Shield of the King, of course, but resilient to a degree that seemed implausible. Ardyn had to admit that at several times he had underestimated just _how_ resilient Ignis was for a mortal. Every single main stage player acted precisely the way he expected them to. Ravus and his lust for revenge on the wrong side once someone manipulated him properly. Noctis and his desire to help people even if it put himself at risk, how his childish adoration of Lunafreya drove him right where the Hexatheon wanted him to be. Gladiolus Amicitia, that clone of Besithia, even the infamous Immortal of Lucis and every single member of the Kingsglaive had played their role perfectly and as the gods wanted them to. But this lone mortal single-handedly defied the ridiculous role the divine had had in mind for him, if Shiva’s actions were to be believed.

And what was even worse, apparently the defiance was spreading.

The absolute last thing Ardyn wanted right now was Noctis to abandon his course.

He lunged forward. Ignis sidestepped the lunge.

Ardyn was barehanded, Ignis had a single dagger to defend himself with. For a while they only circled one another before Ignis attempted to swipe at Ardyn. Ardyn dodged effortlessly, and their circling continued.

It wasn’t even a proper fight. Ignis was powerless—he lacked any source of magic and definitely was not going to last long against someone who commanded Daemons. Not that Ardyn would fall back on something as useless in the long run as these creatures driven by mad instinct. There was nothing to be gained from letting these things tear a human to shreds because they did it frantically, quickly, desperate to spill blood. Only a human could properly prolong death in the most horrible ways. Unless, of course, they were trying to prove a point.

Which Ardyn wasn’t trying to. Truth be told, he had already lost interest in the advisor when something in their ages-long half-hearted trading of blows changed.

Ignis managed to land a hit on Ardyn. Barely more than a slice through his sleeve—but something about metal against his skin made him remember the feeling of steel between his shoulder blades. For a split moment time stood still. For a moment he was in the middle of that town square again, heard a distant voice talk about something.

He reached forward once time sped up again. Managed to grab the still surprised by his blow landing Ignis by the arm and yanked him forwards. Perhaps it was just as idiotic to do this as was Ignis’ refusal to beg for his life, but Ardyn all but slammed their heads together. It was impressive that Ignis did not even let out a single noise despite the fact that this had to have been painful for a normal human being.

“Woe to those who raise their arms against the heavens,” he hissed at the advisor. “Who are you to betray kith and kin for the side of dark, to yield to it, and then claw your way back out of it? How did they welcome you back with _open arms_ when in the not so distant past they cast out any and all who even just allegedly danced with darkness?”

Ignis audibly ground his teeth for a few heartbeats, and finally his nerves betrayed him. There was a nervous glance thrown to the sides before he looked back at Ardyn. They stood there for a moment forehead to forehead, Ardyn’s fingers digging into Ignis’ upper arms as he held them together, and all Ignis did was shrug slightly.

“If I had an answer for that, perhaps I would share it,” Ignis said with his voice not shaking the slightest. “For now, who I am? A pest, I suppose. One incredibly lucky, lucky pest.”

Something lit up. Ardyn let go and Ignis once more stumbled away. He dodged what looked like an arrow of light and a fireball which made him back away from the advisor quite a bit.

He turned his head slightly and suppressed the urge to hiss like an animal; then dodged a familiar weapon that someone hurled into his direction. The spear dug itself into the ground with an ugly crunch, and Ignis let out a soft, breathy laugh.

“An incredibly lucky pest who definitely does not deserve that kind of luck,” the Chosen sighed, “but either way. Your fears were not unfounded, Ravus.”

Noctis’ face was grim and he definitely looked displeased. Aranea had hurled a prototype of her own weapon, she had her actual one drawn and pointed into Ardyn’s general direction. What surprised him most was the fact that Ravus had refused to draw his weapon Alba Leonis but still led the group. Out of all people present, he looked the most furious.

But despite being outnumbered and _seething,_ Ardyn realised something rather important. Ignis had not been accepted back into society. He was an outcast. An outcast who had not been granted the power to use the magic he was so good at using because the Chosen did not entirely trust him. While the advisor had been let back into the last bastion of humanity, there was still a chance that he would continue being an outcast for the rest of his life. That was perhaps a fate worse than being banished.

Therefore he turned to look at the unwelcome newcomers.

“Ah. I had nearly forgotten. ‘Tis always the most beloved family arriving in the most inopportune of moments rather than Daemonic entities.” He bowed to Noctis. “Dearest distant nephew mine, how I would have loved to present that traitor to you in pieces, but alas, you foil my plans with your arrival.”

He knew when he was outnumbered, but that look of absolute bewilderment on Noctis’ face was worth quite a lot. He idly leaned out of the way of that next arrow of light—in half a year Ravus had managed to find his calling but that did not mean that he had given up on training how to find altogether. Though he was a lot better in direct combat with weapons than he was at flinging spells around. But light spells were something that only his bloodline managed and therefore no matter what it was an imposing spell to use.

“I see your heirloom yet eludes you,” he snarled once he noticed the conspicuous absence of the Ring of the Lucii. That meant that Ignis did not have it; wherever it was it needed to resurface immediately. Posthaste. Yesterday.

Ardyn was _so sick_ of this waiting game. “Not that my darling brother was ever better at keeping his things in check. Do try harder, will you, Noctis dearest?”

He could see the gears grinding in that unfortunate boy’s head. He was piecing the puzzle together one by one, piece by piece. Slowly. Too slowly. Gods, Ardyn _hated_ that brat more than he hated Ignis. More than he despised Ravus.

He moved slightly. Aranea and Ravus both drew their weapons and raised them to ward Noctis as he thought. Ignis scrambled away from where he stood to come to a halt in front of these two. Ardyn merely rolled his eyes and threw his hands up in the air.

“Goodness, _goodness._ I had thought a family reunion would mean I get spared the rabid dogs for once, but alas and alack! Not even _common courtesy_ they taught you, did they? Is that how you treat your _fellow royalty,_ Noctis, our blood relation all aside?”

He saw the exact moment that Noctis understood what was going on. The kid all but snapped his head back up, his infuriatingly familiar blue eyes blown wide by that sudden realisation.

“Ahh, there we go.” He bowed again, this time deeper. More ironic. It was a thinly veiled insult, and Ravus and Ignis both shifted because they understood the gesture—just as King Regis had had back in Insomnia, sitting on his marvellous throne that now lay cracked and abandoned. “Do send Somnus my _warmest_ regards should you come across him. I am _truly_ dying to meet him. Oh, and Ignis?”

The silence in Cleigne was choking. Overwhelming. Ardyn drank it in as he felt the magic net abuzz with energy.

“Keep your eyes open and your back watched. Traitors do get repaid warmly with swords in their backs. Ask your Founder King. He of all people should know how it is to _permanently_ breathe your last with a weapon in your back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as with amaranthus back before episode prompto released, i acknowledge canon expanding under my feet but
> 
> at some point into a fic you have to call quits with bending to canon no matter how compliant you’re trying to be, and after nearly 300,000 words in the series i gotta say i won’t be adjusting somnus to what the trailer showed instead of both guilty and jealous  
> the only thing that was already kind of planned going forward was that his shifts between bitter hateful jealousy and soul-crushing intense remorse are going to be more intense to match his brother’s ricocheting between completely aware of the horrible things he’s done and just not giving even a shred of a damn about it as he torments the living
> 
> it might be a good idea to read [of guilty conscience](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17028114) to see what i'll be going with, but yeah. i COULD overhaul the entire plot. but nearly 300,000 words across four works PLUS having to wait until the end of march and THEN at least a month or three to fix everything? can't do it to myself or you guys (month-long breaks due to depression all aside)
> 
> anyway! thanks for your attention everyone!


	48. VERSE 2 - the guilty, the blameless, and the in-between

He almost wished they were in a cave so he could hear the slap echo through it.

Noctis was trembling by the time Ardyn had slowly sauntered off into the distance, and the second that the Accursed had vanished from their sight he had shoved the weapons Aranea and Ravus had crossed in front of him aside to march up to Ignis and slap him with as much force as he could muster. Ignis took it quietly without even as much as a _sound_ of pain despite how brutal Noctis had tried being.

“Ravus, Aranea, return to Lestallum. Find Libertus Ostium and tell him he’s placed under Code 60-HK-8. Aranea, tell him to meet me at the gates at 2200 sharp, there’s something I wish to discuss with him. You’re both dismissed.”

Aranea saluted, Ravus bowed, and they both left not after throwing a curious glance at king and advisor. Ignis stood perfectly still, perfectly straight. Noctis meanwhile opted for another slap. This time Ignis kept his head turned, and Noctis exhaled a shaky breath.

“If you wanna die so bad, couldn’t you have done it while I could only _hope_ you’d come back?”

The advisor slowly turned to look at him, but Noctis turned his back to the man. He really wanted to get back to Lestallum, but something kept him in the silence of the dark outside of the city. His thoughts were running wild and in wide circles, from Ardyn to Ignis to his own role in this mess. But in the centre of that maelstrom remained the fact that Ignis seemed to lack any sort of self-preservation at this point. Noctis should have realised it half a year ago when he had feverishly talked about saving him no matter the cost—should have realised it after Gladio said that Ignis acted odd even for Ignis standards. But now it was glaringly obvious.

“You came back because you figured out a way to save my life, you said that much.” No reaction, and Noctis only folded his hands, kept his back deliberately turned to Ignis. “But answer me honestly here, Ignis. Do you intend to live until the day I take my throne back from Ardyn?”

“I,” he began, then likely clamped his mouth shut as he only did when it was the two of them and he was trying to figure out a way to best lie to someone from the Crownsguard. So many years, and Ignis had still not managed to learn how to lie to Noctis out of all people in the world. It was endearing, it was something that Noctis treasured—normally.

This entire situation was ridiculous. It _hurt._ He’d spent the last few months watching Ignis fall apart further and further from the sidelines, and even though Gladio got off his case once he started talking to his mother again, there was still an air of hostility around Ignis. The people in Lestallum who had not been directly affected by his actions all answered with the same amount of hostility; the only ones that still held open contempt for him were the Niffs that had come to Lestallum with Loqi, understandably enough. It was rather obvious that Ignis tried to avoid them as much as possible, but with how things were developing the rift between the nations was slowly but steadily closing, perhaps to be entirely bridged at some point in the far or distant future.

Noctis closed his eyes and lowered his head. “Have you, for just one damned second since then, considered _anyone’s_ feelings?” Silence. He unfolded his hands and let out a shaky breath. “I know a lot goes through your head. That’s what you’ve always been good at, thinking lots and thinking fast. Hell, you covered the thinking for all four of us while we were on the road. I know and I understand that this was kind of you trying to buy more time so you could think of something, but gods be _damned_ , Ignis, you’re just trying to kill yourself before all this is over, aren’t you?”

For a long moment, Ignis said nothing.

Noctis could only think of all the times that the advisor had been speechless like this before. It wasn’t very often—Ignis was not a particularly chatty person, but there were very few instances that had left him unable to think of a reply right away. The first time he ever recalled that had been the time after Tenebrae, where it had always been Ignis who had insisted on calmer activities; and then Noctis, finally able to walk again properly, had insisted he wanted to see the festival somewhere in a district rather far away in Insomnia. Ignis had stopped mid-sentence when Noctis interrupted him with that, and had not said anything for a long, long time. Every time Ignis took a moment to process something to think of an answer, something that he hadn’t expected was happening—or someone called him out for something.

And then, finally he heard a movement from behind him.

“Noctis, I… I….” A shaky exhale. “I’m sorry.”

But he didn’t turn around. “I’m pretty sure I know what you’re thinking and why you’re doing all this, but have you ever considered, for just a moment… that I wouldn’t want to live in a world without you, either?”

He turned around after that. Ignis had spent so much time recovering. Even now he shied away from human contact of any kind, so Noctis was not going to even attempt it.

“Sure, you did some pretty horrible stuff. The Niffs, Cor. Action, inaction. All willingly. But do you really think that dying at some point will make that any better? The Niffs won’t suddenly forgive you unless you make amends. I’m pretty sure everyone in the Crownsguard would forgive you if you just told them the truth. But you… you just don’t. It took you ages to talk to your own mother. And then you do things like… leave Lestallum completely on your own. Granted, Ardyn’s a tad extreme but there’s… there’s a reason why people don’t leave the city on their own.”

He started walking back towards the city. Ignis followed, slowly at first but before long they both fell into a familiar trot. Ignis right behind him, at his back—as he’d sworn he would always be. No matter how long they spent apart, no matter how raw Noctis’ heart felt thinking about this, it was comforting in an odd way. He always had been able to just turn around and see Ignis there, quiet but confident in ways that Noctis was. Which fell in line with what Ignis had said; that he had been raised to be a replacement king.

That was something that still left a bitter taste in his mouth. All this time Ignis had spent trying to help turn Noctis into a good leader, when they had been raising Ignis to be one. Because everyone knew that eventually the last Lucis Caelum would die to bring down… a relative. He pinched the bridge of his nose by the time they were close to the gates of Lestallum, uncertain what to think. He really needed Libertus.

“The last thing I want is you dead, even after what you did,” Noctis said quietly, “because despite everything, you’re Ignis. The same guy who sneaked me out of the Citadel so many times that I lost count. Same guy who wrote down recipes in notebooks. The… the same Ignis I fell in love with, death wish or not.”

He heard that soft surprised noise that Ignis made, but Noctis only signalled for someone to open the gates to let them back in.

“I’ll tell Aranea to take you where you need to go. You’re free to leave in a week.”

* * *

Code 60-HK-8 was something that the Crownsguard and the Kingsglaive both used. Generally it meant that someone was suspected to be in special kinds of danger if left alone and the Glaives and guards were advised to stay around that person. If the person under the Code was a member of either group then they were advised to stay around other people.

They had reworked the code for Lestallum—what it meant now was that there was something or other that had fixated on the person and they were under strict orders to not leave the city at all. Noctis had considered issuing the same kind of code on Ignis, but as today had shown, Ignis either refused to listen or didn’t care.

Libertus Ostium on the other hand knew what that code meant, and moved accordingly. Ravus accompanied him to the gates of Lestallum, but after that the Tenebraen prince left the Glaive with Noctis.

The poor guy looked positively mortified to be alone with Noctis, just as he had had back when he had revealed that he had gained the favour of a King of Yore. The first person to do so, and finally the pieces fell into place.

Noctis shot him a smile he hoped was comforting rather than terrifying. “Sorry for all of that. Without an explanation, that must’ve been kind of terrifying, but I promise it was for the best that way.”

“’s all fine, Your Majesty,” Libertus muttered almost awkwardly. “Just wish I knew what the hell’s hunting me. Ain’t left the city for a while nursing a cold ‘n all that, and now this.”

He gestured at the man to follow him, and without as much as a single complaint, Libertus followed in silence. Noctis tried to strike up a conversation, but out of all Glaives in the world, Libertus Ostium was the single one who did not drop any sort of politeness around him. Everyone else had long since gotten used to the king walking beside them like a friend almost, but this man kept his safe distance. Why, he had no idea, but it was likely related to something that had happened during the fall. Just as Ravus avoided the topic, Libertus did as well, and after a while Noctis stopped bothering him.

He led them through a few streets and nooks and crannies, until they reached a part of Lestallum that was not accessible to anyone. There really wasn’t a point in keeping it locked up these days given that the Ring of the Lucii was still absent, but something about the Crystal made Noctis uneasy.

“Do you know what we keep in the warehouse behind us?” He leaned against the wall once they stopped, and watched the Glaive shuffle uncomfortably.

“The Crystal, I s’ppose.”

This entire situation must have felt as if Noctis was about to stab him back here where there were no people. He let out a sigh. “Yes. Anyway, I know most Glaives don’t react well to being locked up, but for the time being I really have to ask you to stay in town. Half the reason why I asked you to come here is the fact that the highly esteemed Chancellor of Niflheim might be after you for a certain reason.”

Libertus paled visibly.

“And that certain reason’s why I asked you to come. You were the first one to get a blessing from one of my ancestors, and from the Founder King no less. Given recent developments and whatnot—“

“Audra and Galen… You think that bastard’s the one who killed ‘em?”

Noctis had never even learned their named. He only knew them as the people who walked beside the Rogue and the Fierce—but for Libertus they had been companions. Fellow Glaives, even if the woman called Audra had started as a hunter from the Ravatogh region. It made it glaringly obvious how small the world truly was, but with its fate on his shoulders, Noctis had not been able to consider may people individually. He needed to lead them, no matter how broken he felt—Ravus had told him as much. His father had sent him out of Insomnia to keep him from the destruction, knowing that if the Chosen fell the entire world was soon to follow in eternal darkness. What measure were a handful people in comparison? But for someone like Libertus, those people he could not consider were friends, companions. It explained why so many people had felt disdain for his father’s choices.

Noctis pinched the bridge of his nose. “We kind of ran into the man today. Long story, won’t bore you with details. But he said that he was looking for Somnus. Who, as you know, was the Founder King. The Mystic.”

“The very king who approached me when we were in Keycatrich and therefore close to that one memorial statue they built of him in that place...”

“Considering that, ah, Galen and Audra? Considering that we found their bodies without the keychains and what not that symbolise a blessing and that Chancellor Izunia said that he was looking for the Founder King… Better safe than sorry, I would prefer if you stayed in town. You’re a decent enough healer anyway. Go ask Ravus if he needs a hand or something.”

The Glaive nodded, still rather pale.

Noctis closed his eyes for a moment and listened to the thrum of electricity and the Crystal behind the wall. This thing was strong, it dulled one’s senses if they knew how to sense magic. With magic springing up in people, he had made the decision to keep it locked away back here until he found the Ring of the Lucii and could approach it as his father had had back when he was alive. Noctis could draw some power from it, could forge new bonds and grant people access to the Armiger and Elemancy, but in the end he was not able to harness its full power.

He blinked his eyes open again.

“There’s something else I’d like to ask you. You talked to the Mystic, right?”

The man blinked a few times. “More… or less?”

Noctis peeled himself off the wall to stand straight. “Is there a chance you could… lend me that sigil for a day? I’ll return it, but I want to know if I could talk to the Founder King through it.”

Libertus looked absolutely bewildered for a long moment. Then, much to Noctis’ surprise, he started fiddling with one of the tassels on his uniform. With an audible click he removed the one thing that did not look Galahdian in any way, shape, or form, and quietly handed it over to Noctis.

It was such an unassuming thing.

With that, Libertus excused himself, claiming that he wanted to find Lord Ravus and talk about how to effectively use his time in the city now that he couldn’t leave any longer.

* * *

He turned the sigil over in his hands as he sat on the floor in his room. He had considered trying to call the Founder King to him once Libertus had gone, but once he thought about it he had not really seen a sigil up this close before. Those who were chosen all kept those sigils close to them, barely visible in some cases or plain attached to their weapons. After spending an hour talking to an agitated Iris and filling her in on what had happened today, he had retreated here and slowly removed the thing from his pockets.

This really looked like a good luck charm or a trinket from an arcade than anything else. Yet as he held it, he felt some sort of energy coming from it. Like a gust ready to go through his room. But there was something… dark about it. Something heavy. If the Kings and Queens of Yore chose the people to receive their blessings because they were similar to them, then perhaps… perhaps the Mystic, too, carried a dark cloak of guilt with him. Libertus was a quiet man, friendly and joking enough around the Glaives but every time he was with a member of the Crownsguard or worse, Noctis himself, something about him darkened. Like he knew something that they didn’t and he hated himself for it.

The same kind of gloom seemed to emanate from this little trinket now that he held it up close.

He really wondered if Ardyn had been telling the truth. Nothing in history had ever mentioned a brother to the first King of Lucis. Just a monster that he and the first Oracle banished hand in hand before they started their long and arduous journey across the land to banish the darkness. A duty they never completed, given that the Founder King fell too early into his reign, dead before his own son even turned eighteen. Hells, it was said that the only death that ever affected the man was that of his wife, a young woman who had also gone too early. A trend that would continue across the generations—kings and queens, princes and princesses, all dead too early. All of them left their mark on the pages of history in one way or another, but none of them ever reached a particularly high age.

Maybe a brother not mentioned by history was… plausible. Especially if said brother turned out to be the Accursed that the bloodline was supposed to defeat, culminating in a sacrifice that killed both of them.

But Noctis wouldn’t know for sure if he did not ask.

“Please,” he whispered as he sat on the floor, “I need guidance. Guidance that no Oracle can give me.”

For a while, nothing changed. Then, suddenly, the dark grew darker. Reality felt as if it shifted slightly, ever so slightly to the left. Then again, what were the Lucii except for something divine that none ought to mess with? And he had just beckoned the first of them forth from beyond the veil that separated them from the living.

He scrambled to his feet, aware that he was still in his room—but it did not look like it any longer. The ceiling was gone, the furniture had all but melted into a spot of complete and utter darkness. But it was not the darkness that had cloaked Eos now; this one was… cold. Impersonal.

Dead.

Dead and heavy.

He waited for a moment, but nothing in this dark stirred. As far as he was concerned, he was all on his own, in an unknown place that was but also wasn’t his room. Something surreal, something that did not belong in this world.

He’d asked Iris earlier what it had been like when the Just had talked to her. She had only mentioned a giant suit of armour that looked almost exactly like the one that was part of the Old Wall, and an almost booming, otherworldly voice that had told her that she would lend Iris her power if she so desired for Iris had passed trials that none but her could have surmounted.

Libertus had likely experienced something similar, and therefore Noctis was bracing for a suit of armour, for a loud voice to break through the dark.

He was not prepared for a soft whisper somewhere behind him.

“If you seek guidance, you sought out the wrong person, blood of my blood.”

Noctis turned around. There was a barely visible phantasm flickering somewhere in the dark around him. With enough fantasy it might have been a human in a suit of armour, but the more he focused on it the less tangible it became. The Founder King, a barely existing memory, known for only his exploits but nothing else. Roughly twenty years he ruled, and then he died somewhere far from the city he named Insomnia, City of the Sleepless.

Nothing about him stood out clearly except for the occasional flicker where something turned sharp. There was a clear face on that darkly-dressed phantasm, but just about anything about him melted into the dark. Black hair, the dark blue eyes. The only thing that really stood out was the occasional stark blue of something he wore.

“Well, maybe guidance was the wrong word to use, Your Majesty. But there is something I, uh,” he watched the mirage flicker nearly out of existence, “wish to ask you about?”

The suffocating dark shifted once again. Except this time it dispersed nearly instantly, and Noctis found himself standing in his room again. It was disorienting to be back to say the least, and the stumbled backwards a little.

Again, the voice sounded from behind him, clearer this time. Louder. “There is more than one question burning under your tongue. Ask, then—I have grown weary of keeping secrets for this long. Whatever you desire, I shall answer to the best of my ability.”

Noctis turned around, and nearly had a heart attack. It was like staring into a cloudy mirror, one that still tried to do its duty as a mirror. The man he now stood face to face with was slightly taller than him, but if one did not know better, they could have been brothers. Everything about Somnus _looked_ darker, however. His eyes were darker blue, his hair perfectly black as opposed to Noctis’ somewhat bluish tint that he got from his mother. Everything about his face looked sharper, gave him an almost sinister look. The perfectly neutral expression did not help the slightest.

“Uh, uhm,” Noctis stuttered.

The Founder King blinked, then closed his eyes and smiled. It looked… wrong. Lopsided. Like it did not belong on his face.

“All things considered, you are reacting better than your father and your grandfather before you. Circumstances and what not permitting, of course. I very much heard you talk to the Just’s chosen not too long ago—you wonder why you are not seeing an imposing creature of stone, clad in armour, with a voice that could shake the heavens or somesuch.” The man shrugged slightly. “We only appear as armour-clad statues to those not of our bloodline. Unless, of course, divinity demands we appear differently.”

That… made a surprising amount of sense. Noctis blinked a few times, feeling a little easier around the man, then bowed his head and muttered a thanks for the answer. If anything else, that only made the Mystic’s expression turn sour.

The man was clearly here. But even through his shockingly clear outline now, Noctis saw the furniture behind him through him. This was… very much not what he had been expecting when he had asked Libertus for the sigil, and the fact that the man seemed to be reading his mind did not make this better the slightest.

For a long moment, everything was quiet.

Then, of all possible things that the Founder King could have done, he sat down and crossed his legs as he sat there, a deep frown on his face. Noctis blinked a few times in surprise, then decided to follow suit.

“Uhm… Your Majesty? I just. Uh.” Nothing and no one had ever taught him to speak with the clearly sentient spirits of rulers past. The implications were terrible, but they also made his heart beat faster. His father. The grandfather he had never gotten to know. If he could bring the Founder King here to speak to him, maybe those two were not that far of a reach either. “Thanks for answering me?”

A non-committal hum.

If this weren’t the man who hadn’t been chosen by the gods to become the first king of this very country, Noctis would have assumed him a moody young man not that far in age from him. Was that what people assumed he was like because he had never been too confident when it came to talking with strangers?

“But yeah, since you heard what I said to Iris, do I… really have to ask it again?”

“Please, do. I heard you loud and clear, but… perhaps hearing you ask will make this easier.”

That was not reassuring in the slightest. He recalled Ardyn’s furious look as he asked them to forward his ‘warmest regards’ to the very man who was sitting on the floor with him now. The atmosphere in the room was once again heavy, as if someone had thrown a heavy blanket over them to mute everything around them.

“The Immortal Accursed asked us to forward greetings to his brother, the Founder King Somnus. Is that… is that true? Were you _brothers?”_

He could hear his own heart beat so loudly that there was no way in hell that the Founder King did not hear it as well. He sat there, his feet crossed. He folded his hands, kept his head lowered, but finally opened his eyes after about a minute of utter silence.

“A pair of brothers. One selfless to the point of self-destruction. One desperate to prove himself from the other’s shadow. A fickle balance, barely held aloft by the gods that chose one and ignored the other until the chosen became too unstable to do his duty proper. Thus they sent for their… second choice. The younger brother. Hand in hand, the Founder King and the Oracle cast out… the elder brother. Sword in hand, the younger desperately changed the records of history, begged the gods to help keep his wrongdoings from all—his people, his descendants. Somnus Lucis Caelum did not have a brother, but he was not born Lucis Caelum. He was born an Izunia. And the Izunia family had two sons—Somnus, of course, which is my name. But the second son, the elder, was called Ardyn.” He let out a very heavy sigh. “Ardyn was my beloved older brother. Ardyn was the older brother I could barely stand. Both at once. Neither at the same time.”

The atmosphere was sullen. Choking.

A heavy cloak of guilt.

History made the Founder King out to be someone who stormed head first into battle alongside the first Oracle with vigour and the earnest desire to save the world. Together those two eased the suffering of thousands of people, even as one of the larger settlements on the continent burned. They ignored their own families for this very duty, and died too young despite the fact that Eos had changed for the better under them. Tragic heroes of a tragic story, all in all.

Not once did it mention an older brother. Having the Founder King say that he had had one made every lesson Noctis had ever learned crumble right under his admittedly spotty but good enough memory of what each and every king and queen had done.

The Founder King continued sitting there with his eyes closed, with his hands folded, and not even a slight tremor going through him.

“Neither of us are free of the shared guilt for the situation, but where I spent an eternity seeing what my wrong had done, Ardyn continues doing wrong to this day. He had been betrayed, yes, but after countless moons of torment there is no excusing him and his actions any longer. What I created through the gods’ desires was a monster, not my brother—but I paid for it. Am still paying for it.”

“Is that why you… why you and the others are reaching out to people from Lestallum now?” He had always thought it odd. The timing was too precise to be a mere coincidence.

“Indeed, that is why we reached beyond the bloodline’s restrictions.”

“At the behest of gods?”

Somnus Lucis Caelum opened his eyes. Those dark blue eyes that seemed like a swirling abyss now that Noctis looked into them properly. Perhaps they were one, an abyss of guilt and regret, but there was something else in those eyes now. Something that suited him, like the villain of a story way in the past that should have been affecting the present as it was now.

“No.” There was that lopsided, wrong-looking smile again. “Had history gone another way, perhaps. But given that it has gone quite astray, we acted on our own. Unanimously agreed upon, between all one-hundred and thirteen of us. We were done sitting back and waiting till the end of time—true, we are Lucii, but we once took care of these lands before you. These people are ours as much as they are yours. Sitting back and waiting as the Draconian ordered us to, until the day you found your way into divine Provenance—the one thing we all agreed on not being the right choice.” And all of a sudden, his expression all but collapsed back into sullen and slightly guilty-looking, but otherwise entirely unreadable. “Heavens know we should have done so much earlier.”

For a few minutes they both sat there in silence. Noctis had so many things that he did not fully understand, but he did not quite dare asking about them despite everything. That man was Ardyn’s younger brother; yet at the same time he was the Founder King that so many loved and almost revered even to this day. And all of that had been a lie, if what he had said earlier was to be believed. Or perhaps not a lie but something that had been deliberately constructed at the request of the gods and him at the same time. All to cover up…

“Ardyn Lucis Caelum?”

He wasn’t quite sure why he had said that out loud. It sounded _wrong_ to him, considering that he had known the man as Izunia all along. The people of Lestallum all talked about Chancellor Izunia, those of the Glaives that had survived the night Insomnia fell also all mentioned Izunia as standing beside Emperor Aldercapt as they took the Crystal.

“The Immortal Accursed,” Somnus whispered, “is a creature hell-bent on revenge no matter the cost. He does not remember the faces of those that betrayed him. Does not remember the fact that had the public known about his affliction they would have turned on him either way. Does not remember the fact that people once called him Sage. All he remembers is the fact that the Crystal rejected him, remembers the fact that the Hexatheon that had sent him on his quest had told him he was inadequate after all the sacrifices… remembers a knife in his back more than anything else. It is those things he acts upon, and focuses his rage on you and the Crystal because of what I did at the request of the gods through the Oracle herself. Only with the help of rulers past and the support of the Hexatheon themselves can the Chosen cast out the dark—by becoming naught short of a god himself to wipe out the Accursed. The price of this _privilege_ is death. _Your_ death.”

Chosen.

Chosen to die, as Ignis had put it half a year ago, with anger clearly simmering beneath his skin, turning his blood into seething acid.

“To bring my brother the peace my actions locked him out of, an innocent would have to carry the burden. I could do naught but _weep_ that day before the Crystal, for it was already too late. I had brought this curse upon my own bloodline, had already lost the love of my life to it and now it would be forcing someone else to die in my stead. Watched as they lived, one by one by one. Cheered for their successes. Wept as they wept. Waited, as if I was the reaper, ready to get them here if they had the unfortunate luck of not being the Chosen. One. After. Another. And then that day came, and another man wept before the Crystal, clutching a child that had seen barely more than five summers. All because I acted when I should not have. And I cannot even ease that burden.”

The Founder King stood up. Noctis stared at him, unable to say anything.

“But no more. The Chosen needs the powers of the Hexatheon and the Lucii to banish the dark. The Ring of the Lucii, yes, but also the Revelations of the Six. Had history gone as the Six would have wanted it to, I would have done nothing. But it is not going the way they want. Let me ask you a question, Noctis. How do you propose you gain the Pyreburner’s support?”

Luna had been the one to forge the Covenants with the four of the Hexatheon who were supporting him. She had reached Titan and Ramuh before him, had made a promise to Shiva when she was barely a teenager. Leviathan and Ardyn had been the death of her. Bahamut and Ifrit remained a mystery to him, their place in history well-defined but their resting places missing from the pages of history. Luna had definitely not been able to reach Ifrit or Bahamut before she died. Ravus would have mentioned as much.

But gaining the Pyreburner’s favour… was there even a way to win the trust of a deity that hated humans and had caused this suffering in the first place?

He shook his head. “I… I guess I would have to fight him?”

The Mystic grinned. “The Oracle boy was clever enough to say that you would take the Glacian’s blessing. But, riddle me this, Noctis. Rather than submit to fate to gain the Draconian’s favour, do you not suppose that fighting him could earn you his support even for your, as the Glacian likely put it, harebrained plot that you hatched with the Oracle boy and your lover?”

“On… my own?”

Somnus shook his head. “Heavens, no. Let me propose something, Noctis. We will support you, without a shred of doubt in our minds—if you can defeat six of us in combat. You are free to choose from all one-hundred-and-eleven for the first five combatants, but you will fight them and their chosen partners. Unfortunately the Rogue and the Fierce… are unavailable. Your last opponent will be me. Should you succeed, you will have all of us at your back should you choose to raise your weapon against the Draconian. … And of course, our help to lay my revenant of a brother to rest and restore light.”

Noctis stood up. Ignis had said that maybe there was more necessary than just Pitioss, but having a member of the Lucii just suggest any of this without a catch… it was either suspicious or the most lucky day in his life.

“Is there a catch? Like if I fail?”

“Considering that it was a ‘catch’ on my end that got you into this situation long before you were even born, I could not threaten you with anything. Should you and the other two fail, you know how this story will end and we will be there to lead your sword strike true and clean. A fast end for you and him both. This I swear; your suffering will not be prolonged should aught go amiss.”

But there was the chance to live that Ignis had found that was once more dangled in front of him. He did not want to die. Heavens, he did not want to die—nor did he want anyone else to die in his stead. Ignis and Ravus had both said that there might be more that they needed that they hadn’t thought of yet. Something that Ignis hoped to find in Pitioss.

“Wait. Is that what Ignis was talking about?”

The Mystic shook his head. “Alas, no. What the late queen kept and he seeks, we do not know. But perhaps we can work together.”

“But only if I prove myself… worthy?”

A hum. “Only if you prove yourself strong enough to raise your sword against the very heavens.” After all, he would be fighting gods, Somnus’ expression seemed to say.

Ignis was already going to risk life and limb somewhere in the outskirts of the country. Ravus was likely risking his own health learning how to heal like that, if Luna’s end had been anything to go by.

He closed his eyes for a long moment, thinking about what would be the wisest choice here. Noctis Lucis Caelum was not a person who rebelled against deities. Then again, following them blindly had brought him to this very point in time, with Ravus realising that his family had been manipulated all along, with Ignis rebelling against the very foundations of Eos itself, and him uncertain what to do next in this grand scheme. Suddenly being the Chosen had felt so irrelevant once he learned that he was just a lamb getting taught to fight a wolf but was meant for the slaughter either way. The people still loved him, the people still knew that he would bring back the light eventually, but none of them knew just what price he would pay in the end.

“… Alright. Deal. I’ll pick the ones I’ll be fighting after Ignis returns from Pitioss, Your Majesty.”

And through that heavy cloud of guilt, there was a spark of something. Something that felt like a spring breeze as the Founder King vanished with a nod.

* * *

He jogged through the streets. Desperately, almost.

There was something he needed to do, and only thanks to Iris he had realised what exactly was going on.

He had forgotten that he had said that Ignis was free to leave in a week. Aranea had been informed, and she had amicably agreed to the terms but only if she was allowed to take someone she trusted along. For safety, she said. Eventually she and Ignis had agreed on Loqi—not that the two men got along, but the only people Aranea trusted more were Biggs, Wedge and Ravus. All three of them were busy with a mission that had taken them as far as Galdin Quay, which only left one choice.

And Noctis had forgotten that Ignis was someone who rushed into things when he had a plan laid out.

Iris had almost meekly told him that Aranea’s airship was nearly ready to depart, and that if he wanted to say anything to Ignis or her that he needed to go, now. That was why he was sprinting through the streets, with people looking after him with confusion on their faces.

The closer he got to the airship landing they had built here in Lestallum, the harder it became to keep it up. He was out of breath, having just sprinted across the entire city. But he wasn’t there yet.

Noctis slid around the corner. Ignis and Loqi were just boarding from the looks of it, with Aranea already inside.

“Ignis!”

His former advisor stopped and turned around. He looked rather surprised that Noctis had shown up at all.

“Noc-- Your Majesty?”

He let out a wheeze as he tried to catch his breath while Ignis looked at him with a raised eyebrow. Sputtering, Noctis shook his head after a moment, then tried to smile at him. It came out looking rather sad he figured, through the exhaustion and the fact that he was legitimately rather worried about Ignis.

“Come back in one piece, alright?”

Ignis blinked a few times, then bowed. “Of course, Your Majesty.”

Somnus Lucis Caelum and Ignis Scientia had both done things that could not be forgiven that easily. They both suffered in their self-made hells for it, just as they deserved in their own eyes. But here he was, the subject of Ignis’ deliberate betrayal and the endpoint of Somnus’ mistake way back in the past. Somehow, after talking to his ancestor and pondering on it for a while, Noctis had figured that he wasn’t mad. Sure, he was surprised, shocked even, but he couldn’t be mad at the man for some reason. They all made mistakes. Some just had incredibly terrible consequences.

Consequences that perhaps could be avoided. Or at least worked with.

Noctis let out another wheeze and stood back up straight. Walked over to Ignis—the former advisor looked rather startled when Noctis took both his hands.

“I’m serious. Whatever you find out there, be it blessing or curse, just come back. We can always figure out a plan C if plan B fails. No need to go with plan A. But to do that, you need to return in one piece.” He squeezed Ignis’ hands. “Come home no matter what, alright?”

The startled expression turned into something that Noctis had not seen in quite a while. Two years, nearly.

Ignis smiled.

Then he leaned in, put their foreheads together as they used to do before all of this. Just for a split moment he forgot that he was in Lestallum, a city left in the dark.

“Oi, Ignis, get your arse in here,” Aranea’s voice crackled through a speaker, “hatch’ll be closed in thirty seconds!”

“I’ll try my best, Noct,” Ignis whispered.

Let go. Turned around. Stopped dead in his tracks. It was unusual for Ignis to stop like that, but then he dug his hand into one of his pockets. Noctis was rather certain that he heard him mutter something that sounded a suspicious lot like ‘he’s gonna hate me for this, isn’t he, Your Majesty,’ and then sprinted up the ramp.

“Noctis, catch!”

He threw something that glinted in the lights of Lestallum as the hatch closed. With the rumble of the engine starting, Noctis caught what Ignis had thrown.

The airship took off, and left him standing in the airship landing in Lestallum.

In his hand glinted the Ring of the Lucii.

He should have known, all things considered. But still he started laughing as he closed his hand around it. That damned thing that Luna had carried with her—of course Ignis would have it, given that neither Ravus, Prompto, Gladio nor Ardyn had had it and they had been the only people on the Altar of the Tidemother that accursed day.

“Dammit, Ignis,” he laughed loudly and waved after the airship with his other hand, “you’re a fucking bastard!”

He could almost hear Ignis say that of course he was one.


	49. VERSE 2 - The unexpected way to regain your balance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look at chapter 31's name and this one's name

Noctis had had a point. Lunafreya and King Regis both said the same in the next week that Ignis spent hunched over a map to try finding what Pitioss was and where it was located.

He rubbed his cheek and continued staring at the map when the two of them finally went silent. Of course Noctis had a point. He had been right on every single account—dying at the end had been his original plan. After all, who would forgive someone who had betrayed king and country? It just wasn’t realistic for people to forgive someone like that, and Noctis was still living in his ideal little world that most people had always worried about when it came to his impending coronation before the peace treaty had been suggested.

But then again, as he walked back to his place, Ignis had realised that Noctis’ vision of a better Eos was slowly but steadily coming to life here in Lestallum. Perhaps not in the way that Noctis had hoped, but here were the nations mingling and starting to trust each other anyway. Even the elusive and aggressive Niflheim, having fallen from its high seat. There were a good amount of people who fought side by side with the Lucians now. A sight that had been unthinkable before and even after the treaty. Darkness however had forced them together—and Noctis was right. The were atoning for their crimes by trying to make a change now.

He fished the Ring of the Lucii out of his pockets. Something about the thing felt different these days, as if life had been breathed into it. Focusing on it for too long made him hear a hissing sound, not unlike what Lunafreya’s voice had sounded like before he figured out that it had been her talking to him all along. Ignis knew most titles and a good amount of names of the rulers from the past, but no matter how many times he wished they would shut up, they never did.

Likely they were riled up by Ardyn’s brother and their relative proximity to both Noctis and the Crystal. The Founder King… Somnus Lucis Caelum. He was more a myth than anything else—some sort of legend that had set the first stones for the foundation of the country, had bled for it and died with a traitor’s blade stabbed through his back for it. Defeated at the height of his rule, when the people of all regions had started considering him and the Oracle he travelled with people who were genuinely concerned for their well-being.

All, of course, fake as far as Ardyn was concerned. Ignis had only heard one side of the tragedy that had unfolded so long ago, and he found himself agreeing that the Hexatheon and the Oracle’s misguidance had had a part in this as much as the Founder King’s jealousy had had. Ardyn was far from innocent; but there was no denying that no one deserved what he had eventually said about what had happened.

Of all people he found himself agreeing with Ardyn. Ignis let out a long sigh and closed his hands around the Ring of the Lucii. Back where it belonged—for the time being. He needed to give this accursed thing to Noctis.

Instead, he slammed his hands on the map as he stood up.

“You win for now,” he said to it, “but believe me, the next round I will emerge victorious.”

He needed fresh air.

Naturally, as it always was, Ignis bumped into someone he did not particularly want to spend time with right now.

Namely a trio of people that he deliberately avoided for most of the time.

Surprisingly enough, Loqi did not bristle visibly this time around, likely thanks to the fact that he was not on his own. Ravus and Aranea were perhaps two of the most respected people in the city that had not directly sworn an oath to Noctis as Lucian citizens; Aranea had apparently never sworn any oath at all other than claiming that she wanted to help the people. They stared at each other for a moment, with Ignis and Loqi deliberately not making eye contact. Then Aranea cracked a grin.

“Well, that’s a surprise. Thought you’d turned into a hermit before we set out together to find what you’re looking for, but here you are.”

Ignis nodded slightly, not entirely willing to discuss this with her. Loqi leaned over to Aranea to ask what all of this was about, but Aranea waved her hand a little.

“How ‘bout you come with us, Ignis? Just so you don’t run into trouble again or get the funky idea to leave the city on your own with no regard to your own safety.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

He followed behind them with his head lowered and his brain completely derailed. The Ring of the Lucii felt like it was burning a hole in his pocket while Aranea explained what Noctis had approached her with the other day. She knew enough about the situation to fill Loqi in, which the Niff took with not even a slight crease in his eyebrows that would have given away how displeased he was with this. This guy had really learned how to keep a level head around people he didn’t like. It almost made Ignis curious, but with a sudden jolt he realised that he had likely learned that from having to be around Cor for a while. Immediately his heart sunk deep into the recesses of his stomach—Cor was a hole he had indirectly torn into Lestallum, one that he couldn’t stuff with anything like false promises or trying to beg for forgiveness he didn’t want. If he could turn back time, he would have in a heartbeat.

But he couldn’t. He was stuck here right now, following the three of them as they discussed something or other that he barely heard until finally Ravus stopped when they reached the main street.

“How about you accompany them?”

Ignis raised an eyebrow. It was obvious that he was talking to Loqi, and while there were several people that he could have been talking about in that very moment there was really only one choice considering their previous conversation. Aranea and Ravus had filled the Niff in on the situation—the situation that included Ignis and his search for Pitioss.

He expected Loqi to immediately tell them to buzz off. Indeed, for the longest time the blonde was quiet, his eyebrows furrowed. Then he threw a glance at Ignis for a moment, to which Ignis replied with a small shrug. He didn’t care. He wanted to tell him that he didn’t care as long as Loqi did not get in his way, and that he was expecting nothing positive from this, that he did not deserve anything positive from that.

“I will. His Majesty placed his trust in us to work together, and I won’t betray that. I don’t trust this guy, heavens no I do not, and our differences might as well be insurmountable, but… it’d be spitting in King Noctis’ face to not at least try it after all the problems he and later Marshal Leonis went through to ensure that we had a place to stay.”

That was… surprisingly sensible, coming from a Niff soldier who had attacked them at the drop of a hat just because Cor was with them.

Ignis only nodded when Aranea looked at him seemingly asking if he was okay with this.

Noctis’ vision of a world united where no wars would tear them apart was perhaps too optimistic, too much focused on the good in people. But in the end, it was that almost naive hope that drew people in around him; Ignis himself being one of the first who had been drawn in. There was absolutely no denying that the prince had shaped up to be a rather excellent king in this time. And Ignis was going to make certain that he would continue being an excellent king when the sun rose again.

* * *

There was a collective sigh from both Niffs when the hatch closed and they took off.

Ignis’ heart was still beating rather fast. He just hoped that his face wasn’t flushed—despite everything, no, because of everything, he still loved Noctis. More than anything or anyone else in this world. More than he valued his own life, something that Lunafreya had carefully pointed out as one of the things that Noctis did not like the slightest in the week as he narrowed down the possible locations of Pitioss further and further the more he started to understand what precisely he was looking for.

“I hope you know you’re a damn straight bastard,” sighed Aranea over the intercom.

“Don’t think he’s straight, but yeah,” Loqi sighed right afterwards.

Obviously they were talking about the Ring of the Lucii, but Ignis was still mentally stuck on Noctis actually touching him properly for the first time in half a year. Familiar. Maybe not as they used to, but definitely reminiscent of the time before they admitted they had the same feelings for one another.

He’d wanted to hand it back to Noctis without anyone seeing, knowing that the ring meant that much to Noctis and his bloodline. But he hadn’t found Noctis before leaving, and decided that it could wait. This had been a spur of the moment decision, the impulsiveness that many people often criticised when it came to Ignis thinking about Noctis. The same impulsiveness that had driven him to bend his knee to Ardyn in the first place, the very same that had driven him to the Blademaster in search for power that he would never truly command.

The two Niffs started discussing something. Ignis still thought about Noctis. There were so many things that had left him with his heart racing as it was right now, but first and foremost it had been his smile as he told Ignis to come back home.

That smile was what he was trying to protect first and foremost.

* * *

From what he understood and what King Regis and Lunafreya said while he thought, he started to realise that perhaps Pitioss was just like Costlemark Tower had been. Something that had survived the War of the Astrals, perhaps from times of Solheim’s rule—perhaps even longer-standing than that. From times that predated the Infernian granting people fire. Either way, it was something that likely did not stand out and stood somewhere between the countless crags and cliffs that littered the Ravatoghan countryside. It had to have survived several volcanic eruptions, too, which meant that either it was high up or nestled somewhere between the crags. Aranea agreed that it had to be somewhere safe.

Just how safe they realised when they landed. This place was a wasteland, something that not even Lucians traversed often. Truth be told, never; there was nothing out here that was of any sort of value. There were no resources that people could use in a meaningful way; the volcanic rock useless for the most part in recent history and everything that was interesting about Ravatogh as a region closer to the volcano than anything else. Out here only monsters bred, the most lithe of the predators that could go for ages without prey because the prey they had available out here was crafty or plain violent when under attack. There had been an entire colony of Morbols out here. Enough of them that there had been a long fence that separated the wildlife from the people.

In the wake of darkness the dust had settled. And with the dust settling the monsters and creatures and whatnot that crawled through these hunting grounds had… vanished.

From the top of the Rock of Ravatogh they had heard the howls of the creatures that hunted during daytime there, just as the howls of Daemons ripped through the silence of the night up on the volcano as they searched for the royal arm that allegedly was on top of that volcano.

But now as he, Aranea and Loqi left the airship to look around near the volcanic rock structures up ahead, nothing greeted them. No Daemons were immediately on their heels, there were no creatures that crawled through the dust. Just silence.

It made his skin crawl with how similar to Insomnia it was in a very, very twisted sense. Insomnia had been hospitable and well-lived in before darkness, and this region had been a barren wasteland where the beasts of Lucis fought to survive, giving rise to the strongest of them. Both places were now completely devoid of anything, and the lack of wind only made this wilderness seem even more desolate. Insomnia crawled with Daemons, a mockery of the city it had once been, but where nature had been left alone nothing remained.

The Niffs noticed that he was on edge because of how empty this place was, and Loqi harrumphed. Mentioned something along the lines of empty space when expecting monsters not necessarily meaning that there was nothing around.

But the further they strayed from the airship, the longer they spent looking at the rock formations or looking for a building of any sort in the dark without a clue where it was, the more apparent the emptiness became. It was breathtaking in the worst way, just as all those ancient dungeons and what not had been, nestled in the countryside with naught but nature around them. Even the ones closest to civilisation, those visible from afar like Costlemark Tower, all of them were oppressively quiet. Reminders of days gone by and the fact that nature did not care and at the end of days only it would remain. Even now in the dark it was impressive how years upon years of no eruptions and yet those in the past had irrevocably formed this place.

They returned to the airship after two hours of silence and fruitless search, with Aranea hitting another potential landing spot. They rested after that brought nothing but rock and settled dust as well.

Days passed like that.

At some point Ignis found himself easily talking to the two of them as if he had known them for a while and not nearly been responsible for Loqi’s death—and the two Niffs in turn answered his opening up with friendliness. Any apprehension Loqi had had vanished in the quiet they tried to keep out of their hearts; and once more Ignis found himself uncomfortably reminded of the fact that all the people he perceived as heartless enemies had a human side to them. Though in Loqi’s case, he was a lot more human and likeable than Ardyn was in the end. There was no point in trying to redeem the irredeemable, something that Ignis considered himself to be as well, but this particular Niff who had been brought up on stories of how Lucis had ruined his family turned out to be a decent if a little uppity guy.

Aranea herself had changed in an interesting way, however. The dark had hardened everyone—but Aranea, who had dealt in darkness long before the sun set for the final time, had gotten softer somehow. Or perhaps she had not changed at all, focused her power on helping rather than her rebellion and that softened her edges a little. She still was pretty much the toughest person he knew other than the late Cor, and there was no doubt in his mind that she could waltz right over every single person in Lestallum and give Ardyn a run for his money before eventually the fact that he was an undying being and she only a human tipped the scales in his favour.

“ _The strength to persevere in the face of overwhelming odds is a virtue that many mercenaries have,”_ King Regis all but whispered in the back of his head, _“but this woman stands out amongst even them. Perhaps her presence in Lestallum made it easier for the people to accept the Niffs—because despite everything, despite her devotion to the project, she is perhaps the most unapologetic Niff I’ve ever seen. Not proud of what her country did, but not apologising for having been born there either. It’s… refreshing.”_

Ignis nodded as he looked around. The other two were ready to return to the airship, but somehow something felt different in the stillness of this place today. Despite his best efforts to nail a proper position down, it was still a huge chunk of Cleigne that they had to search. At least it was not as outrageously huge as the woods and mountains that stood between the Vesperpool and the coast, but still a lot of ground to cover for only three people. Something in the atmosphere here was different.

It felt like he was being beckoned forth by something or someone. A thin, familiar thread that slowly but steadily led him around. Aranea complained about this being pointless and that they should return to the airship and check another spot, but Ignis shook his head slightly.

“No, something here… something. It’s odd.”

Noctis had mentioned that kind of pull in places before, now that he thought about it. The one he still remembered most was Costlemark Tower, though for a while Noctis had looked positively entranced in Steyliff Grove and on top of the Rock of Ravatogh. He narrowed his eyes and stared into the distance. Somewhere behind them was a Haven, Aranea had landed close to that so they could rest before setting out. He scanned the rock formations up ahead, another reminder that the Rock of Ravatogh had erupted several times in the past. But something there looked… strange. But the more he focused on it the less tangible it seemed to become. Like a mirage flickering in the distance. Or, rather, like Ardyn’s illusions distorting as he undid them piece by piece, thread by thread.

“Well,” Aranea said after a while, “I’ll be. Something’s up ahead, but it seems to be… vanishing?”

“I think this is what I was looking for.”

Loqi opened his mouth to say something, but in the same moment a horrid rumble shook the earth around them. After days of utter silence and only their own voices to keep them company it was jarring; Ignis even had to cover his ears for a moment because it was so _loud_ after the near endless and choking silence around them.

“What the hell!?”

The most prominent spot for earthquakes in Lucis was the Disc of Cauthess. A place that was miles upon miles away, and a quake of that magnitude never meant anything good here in Ravatogh. Ignis turned around with his heart hammering in his chest, expecting to see the Rock of Ravatogh erupt for the first time in ages.

Nothing.

The dark remained dark. Whatever this quake had been, it was not related to the volcano behind their backs, as much as that seemed plausible.

The two Niffs looked spooked to say the least, and Ignis closed his eyes. Lucis and Tenebrae were the two countries on Eos most closely linked to the gods and magic powers that Solheim once wielded; Niflheim in comparison had taken over late Solheim’s penchant for machinery and going against the gods, whereas the city states that made up Accordo were as uncaring about all of this as the very seas themselves. A short, extremely loud earthquake in Lucis that seemingly affected nothing around them could really only mean that they had stumbled upon something that was not to be disturbed.

Which meant the mirage in the distance had to be Pitioss. And whatever powers governed it, it was not happy to have been found like this.

Ignis scratched the by now old scar splitting his face almost in half. “Is there a chance you’ll act against whatever your orders were and let me go on my own?”

They exchanged a strange glance. Ignis had mostly been joking about them having been ordered to not let him go on his own, but their reaction alone told him that someone had asked them to keep an eye on him.

Surprisingly enough, they both stepped backwards.

“If you ain’t back in a week, you’re dead as far as we’re concerned and we’ll be going,” Aranea said. “Don’t you dare dying for your hubris quite yet.”

Loqi shook his head slightly. “Everyone’s actions have consequences, but here’s hoping they don’t catch up to you right now. Godspeed, Scientia.”

* * *

The silence outside in Ravatogh had been choking and unnatural. The moment he got close to the ruins, the silence turned from that into something that seemed _right._ This was a place that was supposed to be quiet, something that humans should not disturb unless they absolutely had to. Like a temple, even if proper temples had long since vanished as the worship of the Six became something a little more personal for every person over the years.

Now that it was eternally dark, entering this place was easier than it should have been. The doors that only unlocked when the sun had set were something that was entirely native to Solheim. It remained a tad unsettling, considering that they considered the dark and the cold a sign of death; much like Steyliff Grove had been. For a temple-like building so close to the Rock of Ravatogh, likely a monument to life for the people of Solheim, to open with this mechanism was unsettling to say the least.

But it was far too late to have second thoughts about this now; the pull of this place remained strong and almost hypnotic as Ignis descended.

The place was dark.

Too dark.

Then suddenly too bright.

It seemed surreal, shifting almost. He’d been to a few Sol ruins before, but this place in particular had an unreal feeling to it. He’d never seen any of these constructions before even as he carefully avoided the peculiar-looking spikes. The room he found himself in was comically spacious compared to what the ruins looked like from the outside, and a bad feeling settled somewhere in the pit of his stomach. Something about this was familiar but not in a good way.

In all honesty, he should have marvelled at how beautiful this place was and how it was a treasure trove of ancient writings carved into the dimly lit walls. Right next to him hummed a magical shield that reminded him of the Wall but it was coloured crimson not unlike Ardyn’s Armiger. The further he progressed through that room ignoring the strange whisper that seemed to follow him, the more he started to realise just how similar this place was to Ardyn’s magic. Having been at the receiving end of it for a while, Ignis understood the basics of how the illusions worked. It was a marvel of magical energy, willing whatever its conjurer wanted into being just through that power alone.

Something to be feared. Something that should not exist.

Something that would be better off locked away from the general population.

Ignis watched as a swarm of light blue butterflies that seemed to glow in the dark danced somewhere on a pillar that stood way too tall in this forsaken place. Of all places to find an unknown species of insect that seemingly went against all logic to thrive somewhere in the dark locked away from civilisation, it had to be this one. Then again—were those really butterflies? Perhaps they were just the souls of people who had wandered in here and gotten lost, never to return to the surface.

This entire place was almost too dark to see in. The butterflies glowed but there were no other sources of light other than them and the eerily shimmering magical walls. Light blue and disturbing red—and in some places, a faint yellow light that seemingly came from nowhere and barely gave enough light to see where he was going. The rest of the room was a deep dark abyss that yawned beneath his feet, and the longer he stared into it the more it felt like it was going to swallow him whole. It reminded him of the magic that he had used until he cut the connection himself, and with a deep shudder Ignis marched on.

The whispering followed him as he looked around for anything that could help him, but the more time he spent staring at things the more it became apparent that something here was plain wrong.

Everything seemed to exist, but the more he looked at things the less real they seemed to become. Like edges blurring in the faint light, but he swore he saw something appear and something else vanish in one instance. But the more he thought about it, the more he wasn’t sure whether to trust his own memory or not. Hadn’t this thing always been here, and this other thing had never existed in the first place?

He stopped dead and put a hand on a statue that blocked his path. This thing definitely felt real even if the glow from a red wall that he was fairly certain he had seen in the beginning made it seem unreal. But the moment he applied a bit of pressure the entire statue moved backwards by itself as if it were made of paper and not solid rock. In a bright flash that made Ignis cover his eyes the statue and the red wall behind it vanished at the same time, leaving naught but a trail of flimmering particles behind that did not vanish in the stagnant, dust-choked air.

He shook his head slightly, considered walking back towards the exit. Then he saw that he had made a lap around the room, had gotten out where he had seen the red wall first near the exit. If he dared he could take a leap of faith across the yawning abyss and land back where he had first entered the room.

On the other hand, the red wall had blocked a slope that led further up. Up towards where he had seen the flowing butterflies not too long ago.

He stopped dead on the edge of the platform. A solid leap would get him onto the pillar, yes, but beneath was only stone floor and that yawning pitch-dark abyss.

“ _Halt.”_

It was a thin voice, barely even qualifying as a whisper. But it was clear enough that Ignis understood, and his blood ran cold in his veins. He was used to voices without a visible speaker thanks to Lady Lunafreya and King Regis, and this should have been exactly the same—but he did not know who spoke, why, and how. With Lunafreya he knew that she had been following him since her death, King Regis had only started speaking to him after he picked up the sigil that others in Lestallum bore from different past kings and queens. But this voice belonged to this place. It was something otherworldly, something without time.

For a moment the soft whispering started again, something that he did not understand because it was a language he had never heard before in his life.

Then the thin voice spoke again. _“A pilgrim with a head held high and a confused, desperate heart. We had thought the children of the land incapable of travelling the land they were given—but travelling alone is not enough to undertake these trials, no matter how desperately you seek answers._ _Few people know how to find this sacred place._ _Who trained you, w_ _ho sent you?”_

His mouth was entirely dry. There was just enough energy in this room that he did not doubt for a second that if he said the wrong thing he would wind up dead in an instant. That meant it would have all been for nothing, and Noctis would be joining him in death before long. Ignis blinked a few times, watched the butterflies up ahead continue their dance in the dusty stagnant air.

He could tell them that he had figured it out by himself mostly—but then again, he had only really sought it out because of Queen Aulea’s notebook. And the longer he looked at everything, he more he was reminded of Ardyn.

“Ardyn and Aulea of Lucis,” was what he eventually said.

For a long, utterly terrifying while nothing happened. There wasn’t even the whispering.

Then, finally, _“An apprentice of the sage and the guardian?”_

He shrugged. Perhaps telling the truth was the better choice here, no matter how much he wanted to lie. Actions, consequences. “You could… call me the sage’s apprentice, yes. He did train me—but he did not send me. That was the… ah, guardian?”

A low murmur went through the room. The whispering in that strange language sounded impressed now, with one voice in particular seemingly getting louder.

“ _Very well. Proceed, apprentice of the sage, emissary of the guardian.”_

* * *

This place was… not how he had imagined it would be. Just from the name alone he had imagined an imposing place that held the secrets of this planet within its walls, but the further he continued, the more he started to realise just how inconsequential mortals were. Just how inconsequential he was, no matter what consequences his actions had.

Staring into the pitch dark below him definitely did not make this any easier to him. Something about that dark was alluring, like it was calling to him. It took him what felt like hours to realise that perhaps this was just his desire to bring light and not live to see that day calling out to him. If he managed to save Noctis but died at the end of that story, he would remain in darkness forever. Buried in it. Just as this endless black pitch with its nearly alluring call would be his grave if he hit the ground there. Never to be found. If he only took a single step; and that way everyone would forget about him. The right consequences for the steps he had taken. Just one more. Just one… more….

He smacked himself. “Keep it together, Scientia.”

He had wormed his way through this place thus far, he was not going to take one step and plummet to his untimely but definitely deserved demise like that. Not after going through all the trouble of avoiding the hot red spikes that could likely cleave a Behemoth in twain, not after he had almost desperately scrambled his way up and down and all the way around so many times just to get around a collapsing door and into the next room.

He would have expected ruins untouched for centuries yet filled to the brim with a strange energy to be in… better shape.

It was rather clear that there had been more people in here before him—he’d come across a skeleton at some point and had pointedly ignored it and hurried on, but something this far into the ruins was off. Perhaps it was the deep clefts that someone or something had torn into the walls, perhaps it was the fact that some parts of the walls seemed to be constantly crumbling and reconstructing themselves.

He had avoided asking questions because he had no idea if the voices would answer him, but by this point as he stepped away from the abyss below him his curiosity got the better of him.

“From the way this place is constructed I’d assume it was made to challenge someone or something. But for what reason?”

“ _Inquisitive minds seldom succeed at what they are doing when it requires brute strength,”_ a single voice said, _“but for a mage training grounds that challenge them on a greater scale are needed. For illusory magic is both—knowledge and brute strength. The brutes learn to think as much as they need for their destruction, and the clever learn how to apply their hidden strengths without destroying themselves in the process.”_

He shook his head. “That’s all fine and so on, but.” Ignis gestured at the constantly falling apart and reconstructing wall. “What does this teach me?”

A soft laugh went through the room he was in. The voice that followed him around out of all of them seemed to be having fun at least. _“You do remind me of the sage when he went through these trials all those years ago. Much like you he stared into the yearning abyss that called to him. But unlike you he pointed out the oddities within the training grounds at every turn and twist. Called the weightless stone into question. Pointed out the shifting walls. For a person to learn to control illusions, they have to see through them. A power that bewitches does nothing for its caster if he falls under its spell as well. Many succumbed to illusion tat blossomed out of their own desire. Others went berserk, tried to carve their way out with the brute strength they already had or that they obtained here. And even those that lacked the talent resting within their souls oft went mad despite claiming that they would not. It is a dangerous power to command—but that is what these training grounds are for.”_

He nodded vaguely. It was strange and archaic, but Ignis was starting to understand. This was where Ardyn had gained his illusory powers. He had gone through this place just as hundreds of other people had before him. But the success ratio of this place was abysmally low; because people who wished to command illusions had to be immune to them lest they gave way to insanity.

Kind of like how the Blademaster tested those who would become the Shield of the King either through birth or against their station. That was why countless people had died and why Cor and Gladio had survived or even succeeded at these trials. The unworthy died.

That had always been the way of the gods and this planet by extension.

Those that were deemed worthy gained something. Cor Leonis had gained the humility that made him perhaps the best Marshal of the Crownsguard to deal with the eventual downfall of the kingdom he wanted to serve with every shred of his being. Gladiolus Amicitia had gained a better understanding of how to control himself without losing the edge and the ability to stay rough even when a situation did not demand it. Ardyn Izunia… whatever he had gained here, it certainly helped him live up to the destructiveness that he needed to be the Accursed now.

“ _What is it that you seek? Answers, of course—but answers to what?”_

Ignis drew a hand across the stone wall, not surprised the slightest that it did not feel like stone but rather like old, brittle wood. The texture had looked all wrong, and he was starting to understand how this place operated. Were he in worse condition and more desperate to understand it, he doubted that he would have fully grasped this concept.

“An understanding. I’ve dealt with magic and mages all my life, but there’s something that I wish to know. Can mages undo what the gods deem predestined? And if they can, how can I reach this level as fast as possible?”

A faint phantasm flickered around the corner he looked around; a phantasm that seemed to spark butterflies like the one he had seen earlier. It had a shape, vague enough that he understood it was supposed to be a human but he could not make out proper defining features. Just gold and white and blue, and he was uncomfortably reminded of Lunafreya. Had one of her ancestors, more distant than even the Oracle who stood beside the Founder King, died in this place and become a spirit haunting it?

“ _Magic is the thread that binds this world; the Crystal but a still heart that once beat and forwarded magic to all. It is the key player in how to undo the threads of destiny themselves, but without two key components not even the one who commands the Crystal can escape the pull of it.”_

Ignis held his breath when the phantasm started moving. He looked at the deep, hideous scratch that something or other had left in the wall above where it had been a moment before, noted the fact that even in this darkness something that looked a suspicious lot like fresh blood seemed to run down that wall from that tear in the rock. He hurried after the spectre.

“I see,” he said to no one in particular and looked into the next room. Somehow it looked different from the ones that he had been in before, like it did not belong. “I wish to understand how to stand beside the people who can do it.”

“ _Your heart’s desire is to save the King of Kings from his unjust fate, is it not? To save one destined to die at this level might doom the world.”_

Ignis furiously shook his head and scaled a strange block. “There’s got to be a way to banish the dark but keep the Chosen alive. The gods do not care, but destiny is never set in stone. You call it threads—then there has to be a way to weave them into a new canvas. If he chose to walk this path to the bitter end because there is no other option left to him, I would walk beside him. Restore the original canvas the thread led to. But there has to be a way to reroute the path to a different conclusion.”

A gust went through the room. Several chunks of rock plummeted from the ceiling and started hurling towards him, but Ignis only closed his eyes. Nothing in this place was real. Perhaps even the abyss he wanted to jump into was less real than he assumed at first.

“ _Crystalline, illusory, luminous. Those are the ingredients you need to unravel the web the gods have spun around the King of Kings.”_

He opened his eyes. No rocks had hit him; everything looked the same as when he had entered the room now. Just an illusion. The same magic that Ardyn commanded but raw, without someone to focus it into something that could very well harm people. Illusory.

Crystalline he had seen and used for the longest time. The elements at the behest of someone who controlled the Crystal, through generations upon generations that started with Somnus Lucis Caelum and ended with Noctis Lucis Caelum.

The only thing that stumped him for a moment was luminous. But when he thought about it, he immediately saw the warm light emanating from the Altar of the Tidemother, a light that vanished shortly after he and Ravus had arrived there soaked to the bone and with fear in their hearts. The same warm light he saw after Ravus dropped to his feet, the same warm light that Ravus seemed to confuse for his sister and begged it not to leave him. It had been brilliant.

Luminous.

He blinked a few times as understanding settled in. Noctis and Ravus were two critical people in keeping Noctis alive against all odds.

“Crystalline and luminous… but the only user of illusory is… the sage.”

“ _A single person cannot master all three. Crystalline and luminous are mutually exclusive. Not even the Sage himself could master luminous, for his brand of healing and their brand of healing has a fundamental difference. That fundamental difference you need to succeed. Crystalline and luminous banish the dark. Illusory to support them.”_

“Is there an illusory mage around other than Ardyn Izunia? Please! You ought to know, guardians of these training grounds; I beg of you, help me! I need to find that illusory mage no matter the cost! I need to… I need them to figure out how to undo what fate has in store for the King of Kings.”

The entire room shook. Ignis was rather certain that there were splashes of colour that could only be flowers randomly sprouting from the walls in the distance, all of them in bright colours that seemed impossible in the dark. An overwhelming amount of red, just as the hope that was overwhelming him—blossoming in his heart.

He received no immediate answer, and the splashes of colour were washed away as darkness once more took over. Now that he looked around to see if he caught a glimpse of that phantasm again, he realised that this was the first room he had found himself in. He had made it back to the beginning somehow.

Only that this time around he was on the highest floor that he had found no way to get to. There was a window just across a gap he could leap to, a window that gave way to the eternal dark outside.

“ _None have found this place since the day the Sage completed these trials. However much time has passed, we do not know. And even if one found these grounds, only one with the proper talent slumbering in their soul could master this art. For illusory can destroy. It can also support—but one with a penchant for destruction cannot support with it. One bound to selfless support cannot mindlessly destroy by bending reality to their will.”_

Ignis sunk to his knees. Only Ardyn. And Ardyn had the destructive kind—and even if he had not, he would not be lending them a hand to get rid of him while helping Noctis survive. Blind rage and the urge to get revenge rendered him incapable of seeing reason, just as a Scourge infection rendered people incapable of handling things as their minds went further and further towards madness.

Some things could not be forgiven, and Ardyn himself had been on the receiving end of unforgivable things but that did not excuse the fact that the former victim had become the one that could not be forgiven now. Actions. Consequences.

He slammed a fist onto the ground. It wobbled beneath him as if the rock weren’t really solid.

“Damn it! Damn it all! I just… I can’t let him die like this. Not as a martyr for the greater good when all he wanted to be was a decent enough king that the people liked him!”

He felt something cold brush against his cheek for a split second, and he shuddered.

“ _You, who you have devoted your strength and energy, your very life, to the King of Kings. You, who you completed these trials. Dry your tears, despair not.”_

He wiped his face rather embarrassed. Ignis looked up and at the window across that gap again. Something was there, but once again he was not certain what exactly it was.

Hundreds of voices seemed to speak at the same time, all of them a whisper that unified into a soft and gentle, almost fond-sounding voice.

“ _There are no illusory mages that walk Eos. Only a sage—a sage you trained under. Whether he and you knew or not, it is irrelevant. Stand.”_

He got up.

His own heartbeat sounded way too loud in the silence of these training grounds that he had crossed in however much time had passed since he first entered. It was hard to tell with how twisted the space inside was and how dark the outside was. Everything was in a perpetual state of unchanging stasis, something that needed to end. Something that needed to end without that high a blood price to be paid.

“ _The King of Kings needs to find his full strength. He is on the right path, with his ancestor’s blessing. The Blood of the Oracle needs to find his potential that yet slumbers deep within his soul, buried under false teachings and a heavy, heavy burden that he can only solve by himself and coming to terms with the past. Apprentice of the Sage.”_

Ignis straightened properly. Perhaps there were ways of finding someone’s hidden talents. He only had to tell them about this place and pray that they were a supporter rather than a destroyer.

“ _The illusory mage you seek.”_ And again flickering flowers burst from the stone, hesitantly and not in full bloom. _“Learn how to control your gift. Learn how to share your powers—the illusory mage you seek is none other than yourself.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ADDENDUM  
> [those of you who haven't read verse 1, you might still wanna read this chapter's bad end equivalent's end notes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13910043/chapters/35103593#chapter_31_endnotes)
> 
> it's not crucial but explains the differences between v1 ignis and v2 ignis pretty well and gives an idea what the solution to the ardyn problem might be


	50. VERSE 2 - Me In The Mirror

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter sponsored by [this part of the xb2 ost](https://youtu.be/TV0uYFPEkks)
> 
> fair warning in advance, chapter deals heavily with past trauma and survivor's guilt

The flames grew higher, higher. Crept into the sky, devoured everything in sight. He heard that cry, saw his mother move between him and that sword that stopped a hair’s breadth away from his face. He wanted to yell, scream, tear that sword from her body—or prevent her from covering him. The sound dulled, the smell of fire became more and more intense.

Then the flames turned bright blue, shot into the skies, and came raining down and turned into a torrent. Brilliant light blinded him, and he did not even need to turn to look that he was standing on the Altar of the Tidemother; the soot and blood on his face washing away in the torrential downpour. He squeezed his eyes shut, unable to turn to look at the scene he had seen in Altissia. That had been a mistake. All of a sudden he felt two pairs of hands tug on his coat; one cold as death and the other hot as flame.

“How could you,” howled a voice that sounded like a distorted Lunafreya, “let me die like that, all on my own. I thought you were my brother.”

“Why, why are you alive,” a second, nearly forgotten voice joined in, “instead of us.”

“If only,” said the voice that sounded like Luna began.

“You would die,” finished the second voice that sounded like the mother he had nearly forgotten.

“Die, Ravus. You don’t deserve to live,” they both joined together.

Fire consumed the skies. But the ground remained the cold and unforgiving stone of the broken Altar of the Tidemother.

Ravus Nox Fleuret jolted awake with a scream.

He wasn’t in Tenebrae. Nothing was burning. He wasn’t in Altissia either. The Tidemother had long since been subdued. This was just his room in Lestallum, an empty place with no personal belongings scattered around other than the Trident of the Oracle that was leaning against the wall opposite his bed, with Alba Leonis lying on the floor next to it. The curtains were drawn, the door was locked, there was nothing and no one other than him around in this place.

He exhaled shakily.

For the longest time after the attack on Fenestala Manor he slept poorly. Every night he sat in the forest, every night he lived through the sound of tearing flesh again and again, over and over. He tossed and turned, desperately clutched his head every time he woke; tried to ignore the fire that ate through his room every time he woke. Screamed until his throat was hoarse, screamed until his voice broke entirely for a week and still every so often he opened his eyes to see everything on fire around him. As far as he was concerned he was still sitting in that puddle of blood with Lunafreya next to him, her trembling arms slung around him and their mother nothing more than a charred corpse.

He drew a hand over his face with a heavy sigh.

It had been so long since he’d last had a nightmare like that.

He had no idea what had prompted them to return like this until he remembered what had happened the night before. All that blood. The distinct smell of fire in the field because they had been fighting a Red Giant. The fact that no matter what he did, he had been too late to save one of the Glaives. The charred flesh, the trembling people. The all too familiar atmosphere of desolation and desperation as he sat in a puddle of blood, with a hand on his shoulder—

Ravus scrambled off the bed, rushed out the door and into the bathroom. Throwing up on an empty stomach first thing in the morning was not what he had wanted to do.

* * *

Any other day he would have cared about joining these people with their training. Libertus Ostium had the general healing under control—Ravus only quietly requested that they only called for him when there was a serious injury that none of them could take care of.

The Fleuret bloodline had always preached peace between the nations, had been the centrepiece of belief in the Hexatheon. His mother had been a paragon of peace, Lunafreya had been a symbol of what many hoped could have been the blossoming peace on Eos. Every single relative, every single ancestor, right down to the one who walked beside Lucis’ fabled Founder King had been an emissary of peace. The Founder King’s Oracle to the degree that even her middle name had been a word for peace back in the day. The Fleuret of peace. His mother had been the last one to travel all countries on Eos without the empire breathing down her neck; the Fleuret one would find in the streets. Lunafreya had preached that they would not let the world fall into darkness, that she would do all to keep the light alive but her death had all but accelerated the coming night; the Fleuret of the coming night.

Was Ravus the Fleuret of the staying night?

Was he even in the equation? Had the gods ever accounted for this possibility?

There were no male Oracles. Not once in their long history had there been someone like him, a brother to take the torch after the Oracle sister dropped it. They all could not call upon the magic that evidently coursed through their veins, all of them doomed to stand beside their mothers and sisters and see them slowly but steadily die, knowing that they could not do a thing about it because it was the will of the gods and the price of their power.

What was he, then?

An oddity. Something that had sprung up because of Lunafreya’s meddling with the situation. An unexpected mistake.

Just someone who had survived this far because the people he had sworn to protect had both died and passed him the torch.

“You look like shit, Lord Ravus.”

He’d been sitting on the ground in the greenhouse district, somewhere between rows upon rows of animal feed. It was the closest thing to the flower field next to the manor back in Tenebrae, the closest thing to his home before the fire in this city. But, while this place was off-limits for most civilians there were other people who had access to it.

Iris Amicitia plopped down next to him. “Spoilt stomach? Pretty sure Gladdy was complaining about something funky in his food the other day.”

The two of them never really spoke. She was a bright-eyed teenager who kept her optimism despite the things she had seen happen—Ravus was nearly thirty and deeply, hideously traumatised, as Aranea had said it before she’d left Lestallum with Ignis and Loqi three days ago.

“If only,” he groaned.

At least she understood that, and turned her head slightly. “Ah.”

She was a high-standing lady of war from a long line of one-people armies. Right after the fall of darkness she had been a short kid with wide eyes; one and a half years later she was this hilariously lanky teenager who could topple Ravus over with little to no effort considering that she carried a thrice-damned club around as her personal weapon. But somehow, despite all that, she remained one of the most cheerful people to stay around—her radiant smile alone seemed to give people a little more energy. What was it with the Lucians and that perpetual glow about them that just seemed to rejuvenate people?

Wasn’t that his family’s job, in theory?

Then again, the Fleuret family was more of a guiding light. Indifferent to their own emotions because the people needed something to lean on. Or a guiding light to follow. The Amicitias’ obligation was to protect king and country with their body and soul, to a degree that most of them died in combat while defending their sworn liege. One to lead the masses—one to guard a single soul. It was odd that there had never been something like a Shield of the King in Tenebrae now that he thought about it, but in the end it didn’t really matter. Oracles were untouchable.

Had been untouchable, once.

“I can’t even begin to imagine what it’s been like for you and Noct.” She hugged her legs to herself. “I got out of Insomnia when it fell, but sometimes when I close my eyes I can still see the fire.”

The fires that Ravus had helped sow in the city she had grown up in. He had already been pale to begin with because of his faint stomach, but now he grew even paler in the greenhouse’s lights. All that misguided and falsely aimed rage that had played a direct part in her city burning. Simply because he wanted King Regis’ home to burn just as the last free part of Tenebrae had had, with smoke billowing into the skies as he sat in that puddle of blood unable to process what had just happened.

“I’m just glad we are all around to make a difference now.”

He opened his mouth. He should have apologised to her. All things considered, having to see one’s home burn before their eyes even when they slept was not something that he had wished upon anyone but King Regis. King Regis alone; never _children_ like Iris. Could have said that he had acted like a moron blinded like rage, had played exactly into every villain’s cards and turned into one himself. That was why, in the end, Ignis had mustered up the strength to knock some sense back into Ravus in Altissia.

His insides only constricted as he felt the phantom weight of his sister’s cold corpse in his arms again. How hot the blood felt splattering against his face despite the fact that _everything around him was on fire._

“Y… yeah,” he croaked out eventually. “Make a difference. You certainly… have.”

She was staring at him. His entire mouth was dry, his body stiff. If his late sister’s words were to be believed then he likely spoke in complete monotone and his eyes had unfocused.

Iris looked like she was about to say something, but suddenly her brother’s voice echoed through the greenhouse. It was like someone had taken a jackhammer and was drilling a hole in Ravus’ head, but it snapped him out of that state.

“I’m sorry,” Iris whispered before jumping to her feet and hurrying over to her brother. He stared at them—older brother, younger sister; she playfully shoved Gladiolus when he said something to her and she waved to Ravus before they left.

For a split second he very, very desperately wanted Lunafreya back alive. Just to tell her that he was sorry. Just to tell her that he should have been the one looking after her—not the other way around.

But he’d never be able to admit that to her now. No matter how much time passed, that would be a fresh wound on his soul for the rest of his life; no matter how much he pretended to be stoic and focused on the future and that crying in private quarters was okay around Noctis.

His sister was gone, just as Gladiolus’ was very much alive.

* * *

Unfortunately for him, the next day Iris found him again. He was still decidedly miserable, with plumes of smoke rising through the rain in his dreams and hollow, distant voices begging him to come with them this time.

“Hey! You’re looking better today!”

“Lady Iris.”

She beamed at him, that sort of childish bright smile that Lunafreya had used to smile back before that fateful day their home burned. Even though her own home had gone up in smoke and was now taken over by Daemons and the Chancellor of Niflheim—she still managed to beam like that.

“Good morning! Noon?” She shrugged. “Doesn’t really matter. I wanted to ask yesterday, but Gladdy kinda threw a wrench in my plans and when I finally had time to look for you, you were gone and I couldn’t ask.”

About an hour after Iris and Gladiolus had left, yet another teenage girl approached him. Maris was one of the people who helped take care of the Chocobos that other people had found roaming about in the wilderness, and that feisty Lucian saw the High Commander and took her chance. For the rest of the day Ravus had found himself helping Wiz and Maris with the birds—admittedly, it had kept his mind off things, which Maris admitted she’d wanted to do once she saw him sitting there all forlorn and on his own.

After that he’d spent roughly an hour discussing logistics with Noctis and Libertus regarding the current cases of people who just were plain sick. There was an alarming number of people coming down with fevers—one of the first signs of a Scourge infection. Noctis had asked if Ravus could heal the afflicted, but Ravus had said the truth: he didn’t know how to. That was one of the many things that his mother had learned from her mother, and Lunafreya from Gentiana. From _Shiva._ He did not have a teacher and was not entirely sure how it was different from healing an injury; there had to be a difference because the Scourge was a fickle thing that fought back unlike torn skin and profusely bleeding cuts. There was some sort of trick to it, a trick that the Oracle bloodline knew and that Ardyn had not all those years ago if Ignis’ vague reports on the man were to be believed.

He shrugged weakly. “Then ask.”

Iris shifted her weight from one foot to the other, and her bright expression went unusually glum. “Have you talked to Noct since Aranea and the others went to check Ravatogh?”

“Spoke to him just yesterday. Why?”

“Something about him’s weird. I feel like he’s starting to blame himself for the Scourge or something, so I kinda… y’know. Maybe there’s a way to teach you how to cure it stashed away somewhere in your home. There’s no grave for the Oracle King here in Lucis, so I reckon there might be a way to ask him or your ancestors something if we just… go to Tenebrae?”

“So instead of asking any other person to take you there,” he sighed softly, “you figured that I would be a good substitute.”

Iris’ expression got darker. “I would’ve asked Aranea to fly, yeah, but not without you coming along. I can’t poke around your home without you or your permission.”

He almost wanted her to get lost. He was too miserable to deal with any of this, least of all a return to the place that burnt over and over and over in the back of his head. But something had struck a chord with him, especially since Noctis had asked about it just yesterday. Iris was looking for a cure; Noctis seemingly sought one as well—and their only lead was a healer who could not heal the afflicted.

Shiva had not shown her face since the day of the revelation, apparently had vanished like frost on a window in the morning sun. Gentiana had been a constant in his and Lunafreya’s lives. He did not remember his father at all, considering that he had died before Lunafreya had even been born, but Gentiana had been there. She had always been there. Told him that his sister would be fine. Was there when Lunafreya took her first steps. Was there even before his father had died. A shadow in the background of his life, a person he considered just as constant as the fire that corroded his memories.

She’d only ever been present in Fenestala Manor for him. Her sudden flight following the fall of Insomnia made sense now that he understood that she had been Shiva all along, guiding his sister and the Chosen to their certain doom because of destiny.

Ravus dragged a hand across his face. “That’s… surprisingly thoughtful of you, Lady Iris.”

“Just Iris is fine. But yeah. I wanna check Tenebrae. Lady Lunafreya’s got to have had some sort of notes on the Oracle stuff. And if she didn’t, then we gotta just ask the Oracle King.”

He stuffed his hands into his pockets. “And what makes you so certain that we’ll be able to speak to him?”

A grin lit up her expression as she reached for the necklace she was wearing. Pulled it out and dangled the tacky little thing in front of his eyes like one would dangle a treat in front of a hungry dog.

The worst thing was, he understood and swallowed the bait before she even answered.

“Let’s just say, I got a line to Lucian royals. This lady of war here’s got the queen of justice on her side—and that queen says yeah, we can. How about it?”

He closed his eyes. Getting an airship from Biggs and Wedge ought to be easy enough—he had had relinquished his claims to it for the sake of Lestallum and the people of Eos at large, but he knew that his former personal airship was currently not in use. There was one in reserve should an emergency arise.

Even his poor condition would not matter that much; the airship had an autopilot. The glories of Niff enhancements on top of Sol machinery.

“… Very well. Meet me at the airship landing in ten minutes.”

* * *

This time around, the people reacted more positively to him. Even those that still looked not that happy about Ravus being around bowed politely and then immediately left him to his own devices. The former servants and the more devout believers of the Hexatheon were all very pleased to have the voice of the gods back in their ranks, even if Ravus politely declined any sort of dinner invitations for the time being; claiming that he had no idea how long he would be staying and how much time would be necessary for his task.

Iris all but melted into his shadow; a presence that most people felt and acknowledged but that did not intrude—her father Lord Clarus had been the exact same with King Regis. It ran in her blood; she was a sword ready to strike at any time should something arise. But much like a good sword in a sheath she was quiet, a shadow that followed him around.

The people politely let him go after they exchanged some news, Ravus talked about the situation in Lestallum and they filled him in on what had happened here in Fenestala Manor, the last bastion of Tenebrae.

He couldn’t say it felt like home. But still he told Iris that he was glad he was home.

She probably caught that lie.

* * *

The hallways of this particular wing of the manor remained as they had been over half a year ago when it had been Noctis dragging a barely standing Ignis behind him. This time it was Ravus who felt dizzy and light-headed—but no one was dragging him along. Iris was marvelling at this place, at every delicately painted vase, at every framed picture and eloquently designed door. The Citadel had been impressive when he had been there with Niflheim, but Fenestala Manor was lighter. The white and blue of Tenebrae as opposed to Lucis’ black and gold. Even now most hunters—Ravus included—wore dark colours. It was better to stalk through the dark when on a scavenging mission, he couldn’t deny that at al. But for someone who grew up with nothing but black and gold this likely was outstandingly beautiful.

He stopped to look out of a small window. Last time he had passed this, he had caught an eerie glow in Lunafreya’s dead flower garden and had lost all sense and reason. Part of him expected to find Shiva in the garden again, but this time around there truly was nothing. He caught a shadow moving about somewhere amongst the dead stalks and his frown deepened. Daemons. They were unable to go where there was light, yet at the same time they seemed to know that humans stayed in the light. Therefore they stalked around it, whisked around corners and walls and stayed just out of reach. But they were there, ready to strike once someone left the light and marched into the light.

Just the fact that every single flower was dead and there were now Daemons stalking through it made him upset enough that the nausea returned in full force.

Iris was also looking out of the window, but put a hand on his arm gently.

Ravus caught himself sighing deeply. “If the sun rises, I want to turn it back into the field of flowers she loved so much.”

She beamed at him. _“When_ the sun rises, and you need help with it, ask me. I wanted to restore the gardens at the Citadel anyway.”

A collaborative effort between Lucis and Tenebrae. His sister would have loved that, he said quietly—because she would have. Lucis had been a distant dream for her just as distant as going there to have Noctis show her his favourite places had been. He could picture her and Noctis sitting in that flower field at sunrise, maybe no longer as the children they had been but as the Chosen King and the Oracle. A moment of reprieve between the flowers she loved and that he had come to appreciate and associate with a calm part of his childhood.

And then fire consumed that vision, left him standing there with shaking shoulders as he tore himself out of his trance. This window was haunted. This entire manor was haunted.

He shuddered. “Thank you. R-Right, this way, then.”

* * *

If there was one word for this room in particular then it was haunting. It haunted him. Haunted Lunafreya when she had been alive. It was the single room in all of Fenestala Manor that had been frozen in time for nearly half his life. He barely even remembered what it had been like when it had been in use, and it made the haunted feeling he got from it even worse. He didn’t remember his mother’s voice outside of the nightmares that kept him in a stranglehold—the moment he woke, he forgot again. Her rooms had been vacant since that day that he revisited over and over in his dreams, had been empty and dead too early.

Iris closed the door. The soft click of it closing seemed to echo through the room, bounced off the walls and the windows and pierced straight through his skull. But rather than lamenting the fact that he found himself standing in this room years after he had stepped into it and sworn that Lunafreya would live no matter the cost, he exhaled slowly. He could see from here that the servants had listened to Lunafreya rather than him—this place was dusty, yes, but it had not collected the dust of nearly 14 years of its last inhabitant dying.

The Trident of the Oracle was a heavy dead weight in his hands. Lunafreya had managed to wield it with both grace and a strength that Ravus was not able to muster. She had stood at the Altar of the Tidemother, her voice loud and clear against the roar of the unforgiving sea, and then had managed to put her foot and the trident both down in a stomp that silenced the raging goddess for a split second. It was a strength that was expected from Oracles, yes, but as he stood there uncertain how to do what Iris had asked about, he realised that he had never expected to have this weapon in his hands.

He walked to the middle of the room, the trident still heavy—too heavy, almost.

Lunafreya had stood tall, had likely only resorted to desperate prayer when she had already been injured beyond saving.

Ravus on the other hand got on his knees in the first place. He knew the song, but there was no god he was addressing. He was addressing the countless women who had held this weapon before him in a desperate attempt to learn if this was truly what was expected of him. An Oracle was supposed to be able to cleanse the dark to a certain degree. But the dark only hung heavily around him, like a cloud that not even talking to Shiva had parted.

The trident was a lifeline he clutched as he held onto it. Perhaps his mother’s room would be perceived as the wrong place to send a desperate prayer to his own bloodline, but for Ravus there was no better choice. Lunafreya’s room was a fresh wound—his mother’s an old, festering one. It stood tall as he held onto it; stood tall as his ancestors had had once.

“Blessed stars of life and light,” he whispered into the eerie silence. That was the prayer that guided his family, guided them from the first to the last. Word that had comforted him once upon a time, words that he loathed with every fibre of his being. Stars that only rose in the night. Life that gave way to death.

It was that constant sway of being proud and being resentful, the constant rise of flame that gave way to a downpour, the switch between day and night—that was what his family preached, he finally realised, remembered, now that he sat here on his knees. That was the guidance that an Oracle had to offer, a guidance that he had long since lost. They were supposed to be the single thing that remained unaffected by the tides of time. They preached peace when there was war—they reminded people of conflict in times of peace.

And finally he got his answer in that silent room. Iris gasped softly, whether because she was surprised or not irrelevant to Ravus as he looked up.

It wasn’t his own ancestors that answered him, but it was an answer irregardless. The Lucian King they called Oracle because he picked up the very weapon that Ravus still clung to—and utter, all-encompassing darkness. Where his mother’s vacant room had been a moment ago everything else had been placed in complete darkness. Even Iris.

His mouth was dry when he caught something else moving about in that abyss, something that did not seem to belong. It was brighter, even less tangible than the Oracle King before him, and Ravus instinctively knew whose spectre it was in this abyss with him. He’d heard the Glaives who had come face to face with the Kings and Queens of Yore; while perhaps not the chattiest of them and definitely a noble from another country, Ravus Nox Fleuret was considered a Glaive just like the rest of them. No matter the nationality, no matter their social standing; they were all the same in the dark fields of Lucis. In Lestallum they respected the boundaries that royalty and commoners had, but in the field they were one people working together. Thus he’d been there for conversations between people—and Aranea herself had talked about it almost excessively when she’d gotten hers. Normally she was the one listening to him, but that time Ravus had been the one to offer her a cup of tea in his apartment instead of the other way around.

He shook slightly as he continued sitting there on his knees, unable to truly look at the Oracle King and the wisp of light that danced around in the dark behind him. “Deliver us from darkness’ blight. Were those the words that the ancestor of mine who walked alongside you until the tides of fate claimed her spoke upon your first meeting?”

For a moment there was silence. Then he thought he heard a faint laugh. _“_ _Those were her words._ _The generations come and go, but the Fleurets remain e’er the same._ _Uncertain when things do not go the way they ought to, despite the fact that they above all else are the ones who should balance between two extremes. And here you stand, a child meant to weather war shattered by it—while your late sister was the child supposed to usher peace, but fought and lost her war instead.”_

He kept his head bowed.

Siblings who did not become Oracles were meant to rule the country because the Oracle’s duties kept them busy enough as it was. Oracles were meant to travel the world without being bound to Tenebrae’s throne—of course, that did not always happen. His mother, for example, and his grandmother before her. Right down to the first Oracle there were several who were bound to Tenebrae’s throne, something that always brought chaos into that particular time. The woman who travelled with the Oracle King for example. It were her husband and her children who received the trident from the king when he had fulfilled the duty he and the Oracle had set out for together.

The dark twisted and turned to give way to the room again, with Iris still standing somewhere behind him.

Ravus let go of the Trident of the Oracle. A loud clatter echoed through the room as he clasped his hands together. Might as well do it like a proper Oracle, because being able to heal the Scourge or not—he was able to heal and of the Fleuret family. They prayed. All of them prayed, whether as Oracle for the Star’s salvation or as the siblings and family left to take care of the throne that they would return in one piece.

“Please. I know not how much you can tell me, but I… no, the people of Eos need help. We were left with Oracle Lunafreya dead before her prime, with darkness snapping at our heels at every turn.” His vision was swimming. For a second he thought he caught a lick of flame on the edge of it, but ignored the awful faint feeling. “The people of Eos need an Oracle who can heal them. We need to keep the Scourge at bay if we want to live until the day the sun rises once more.”

“ _A day you wish to bring in a way that the Six have not intended.”_

Ravus’ entire body tensed. How did the Oracle King know of that?

“ _Worry not. We, too, would see what your solution is. We will not oppose you—we will support you instead. But that is all we can do. Support. I cannot teach you your family’s magic. Cannot tell you what it is that you need to learn to see the King of Kings through this unharmed.”_

He closed his eyes. “It would be much appreciated, but… with all these contradictions at hand, how are we—“

For the first time since entering the room, Iris spoke. “That’s for you to learn, isn’t it? The Oracle guides the masses, connects us to the Six. You’re the one who’s supposed to lead—“

“I can’t!” He hadn’t meant to shout. But still, he sat there on his knees, his hands clasped together and his eyes squeezed shut. “If anyone here needs guidance, it would be me! For a Fleuret cannot lead if they are _terrified_ of the flames they are supposed to quench, they cannot lead if the water they are supposed to guide across is full of corpses calling for their death! I was never meant to be in this position, I was never meant to replace my sister; I am one of the contradictions that need not exist for all of this to succeed!”

He was outstanding at pretending. He pretended to be in one piece around Noctis, because the people needed a leader who was not barely holding together. And despite his earlier, rage-clouded judgements of Noctis he had turned out to be just what the people needed. Stronger than most others even if he reacted faster than them. Even though he had seemingly lost all hope without the Ring of the Lucii he had managed to persevere through all of this while Ravus came apart further and further. He did not doubt for a second that if it had come to it at any time, he would have attempted to kill Ignis were they on opposing sides still. Noctis on the other hand would have reached out, would have offered a home time and time again, with the patience of a saint while being as persistent as a displeased child. For Ravus only saw the traitor, a danger to Lestallum—and Noctis saw that underneath everything there was still a person who had made these choices. A person who was terrified, angry. The same kind of person that Ravus was.

Except that Ignis had not been directly responsible for so much of the agony that was still present in Lestallum. Every story of a person who fled Insomnia was an invisible finger pointed at Ravus. The city had been his responsibility, but even before Emperor Aldercapt had given him that responsibility he had signed the papers that led to the use of the Daemons that had destroyed it. Even before Glauca had killed the king, Ravus had signed the contract with the empire in the blood of the people that Lunafreya had sworn to protect.

It really should not have been him sitting here, talking to the Oracle King of the Lucis Caelum bloodline. It should have been Lunafreya. It should have always been Lunafreya.

He nearly jumped out of his own skin when he felt something cold and heavy on his shoulder. He blinked in confusion as he registered what was going on—the Oracle King had bent down in front of him and put his hand on his shoulder.

“ _Perhaps this might sound foolish coming from one such as I, but you are not a contradiction to be solved. The Oracle has fallen, yes, but is it not your duty to pick up where she left off? The women of your bloodline are all outstanding, but at the end of the day they were never meant to last long. The Six had made one mistake, and thus placed their hands over your family. There would not be a second Accursed, they swore, as they herded your bloodline to its inevitable end—foul rancour claimed your sister, would have claimed you in the end had it gone as the Six wanted. Against all odds, you live. So do as I did, son of House Fleuret. Pick yourself up. Get out of the swamp, the Oracle’s weapon in hand. Mend your wounds, steel your resolve. One day, inevitably, the monster would be defeated or sealed away that it might not claim another life—one day, inevitably, the flames will part and become a candle’s flicker, the harsh rainstorm will lessen into a drizzle. It will never leave you, heavens it will follow you to your grave. But who if not you yourself has to be the one to take these hard first steps?”_

The Oracle and the Lucian King who set out together to vanquish a vile creature. The Oracle, dead at the claws of the beast, and the King left alive. He had taken up her weapon, finished the job they had set out to do together—and then returned her weapon to her ancestral home and her family. It was no secret that those two had had more than fleeting affection for each other, but the family that she had left not once held him in much contempt. The rancour that guided Ravus’ hand was something he had worked himself into, with Ardyn’s ever encouraging whisper somewhere in the back of his head. But back then even his ancestors had managed to see through grief and anger and accepted this king’s gesture.

This weapon now showed that the Fleuret and the Lucis Caelum bloodlines were always meant to stand side by side. Noctis could use it like he could use his own ancestor’s weapons. But he had insisted that Ravus kept it. A gesture that Ravus had accepted but now finally understood fully.

“I….”

“ _And once more, it might sound foolish coming from a man who forged onwards alone—but you do not have to. You are not standing in the heart of the empire on your own with naught but a dreary reminder of flame searing in your broken heart. I would offer you my aid, son of House Fleuret. As would countless souls in the City of Light. Even a guide has to accept help on occasion; they accept this. Gather the strength you need to stand tall when the time comes. With time you will be able to sort through the contradictions, even those that keep your heart ensnared.”_

Aranea had said that these Kings and Queens of Yore seemingly sought people who were similar to them. People who had struggles that reminded them of themselves, or simply people that they felt were a match somehow. Whatever it truly was that these ancient spirits sought was a mystery even to her, but she had felt that they understood, to a degree.

Was it really that surprising that the Oracle King would offer his aid to one of the Oracle’s bloodline? Perhaps not. It was still shocking to Ravus, however.

“ _As for the power you and the Lady Amicitia seek to ease the Chosen’s mind—it is a fickle thing that fights back, the Scourge. Fickle before it turns savage. You need only reach out properly, she told me once, dig your fingers into it, and tear it out. Luminous shine will keep it out of your body as you pull, even if the stronger and more progressed cases are impossible for you.”_

Ravus deflated a little before he slowly rose back to his feet. He still felt extremely faint; his vision was dulled and now that he stood again his head felt extremely stuffed.

“Please… lend me your strength.” He offered the Oracle King his open hand. “Not as Oracle and Oracle, but rather as equals who wish to protect the people until the sun rises once more for them. Let us… let us do what my ancestor was unable to do. Guide the people, hand in hand.”

For a split moment the Oracle King took his hand. Blinding light filled the room, Ravus felt something in his open outstretched hand that likely was the sigil that the others carried around with them; something that Iris behind him carried as well.

His legs finally gave in after that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as a small aside; a lot of the things especially concerning ravus did happen in verse 1, albeit offscreen since he was not a centre pov character. and ofc slightly to majorly differently.  
> getting to write some (more) of the admittedly intense background worldbuilding/character development was half the reason i started poking around verse 1 to see if there was a point where ignis would have left ardyn if he had found a lead!


	51. VERSE 2 - the dark calm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 302,000 words, huh,
> 
> 'scuse me, see you all in a month, i think i'm gonna go cry for a while and hibernate until ep ardyn and 14's patch 4.5 pt 2 this month

He had contemplated Scourge infections for a while. Right after Ignis left, he had caught a conversation as he walked with the Ring of the Lucii in his pockets which brought the topic back to his mind rather than the hopeful feeling of everything seemingly going right for once. One of the Niffs said that they’d started feeling feverish and considered leaving the city. They did not want to cause any trouble in Lestallum after King Noctis had been so gracious to accept the Niffs despite everything. They would rather die somewhere out in the wild than potentially become a threat to this fragile peace.

Iris caught him brooding the next day, a deep frown on her face as she watched him sit around from where she was training. Eventually she disengaged from the training dummy in that small alcove that Glaives generally used for warp training and walked over to him.

“Hey, Noct? Everything okay with you?”

He grumbled, unwilling to say what was going through his head. The fact that people would rather leave the city than potentially cause trouble was bothering him. True, there was no cure for it now that Luna was dead; Ravus had confessed that he was unable to heal because had no idea how to. He knew how to reconstruct torn flesh but something about the Scourge eluded him still—and it went without saying that Ravus was more than unwilling to ask Shiva for help. He pretended to be fine, Noctis realised after assessing the situation for a while, but Ravus was perhaps the most mentally tortured out of most people in Lestallum. The woman he had confessed he wanted to keep safe because she had been family had turned out to be one of the gods that had urged his sister onwards to march to her early demise, and on top of all of that she had apparently done the same with hundreds of his ancestors, since the beginning of time.

Iris poked him in the shoulder before sitting down next to him. “You know you can tell me things, right? I might be your first Glaive but above all else I’m your friend.”

He looked at her. Her reassuring smile was as sincere as they always were—despite her thinly veiled secret crush on him, she had always valued their friendship above all else, just as Ignis had had. While not as uplifting as Prompto or as brutally honest as Gladio, Iris was a close and dear friend to him, someone he could lean on.

Noctis leaned backwards. “Scourge.”

She seemed to understand what that meant, judging by her deep frown that made her smile vanish. She only nodded but said nothing else. Maybe she was waiting for him to say something else, but Noctis remained silent, painfully aware of how he had never considered the people’s feelings on this matter.

* * *

Noctis felt strangely watched that day.

Ravus and Iris had seemingly vanished altogether, but after asking about the two of them, Gladio had said that Iris had wanted something from Ravus—it probably meant that they had gone out of the city together. After checking the daily response from Aranea—no, they had not found a thing yet—Noctis wandered the streets aimlessly once again. But soon enough afterwards he felt as if someone was watching him. But no matter how many times he turned and looked, no matter how many times he focused on his surroundings to see if something nearby felt off in the magic net he could barely sense, nothing stood out.

Was he just unusually paranoid?

There definitely was something off. Something was following him, and something different was pulling him somewhere. It was like a faint call. Eventually he dipped into the streets that led to where they stored the Crystal in an attempt to shake off whatever it was that was following him. If it was a civilian they would leave him alone because that place was off-limits.

But the closer he got to the Crystal, the stronger the pull became. Eventually he found himself standing with his hands on the door, fumbling to open it.

“ _Stop right there. Let go of the handle. Take a few steps back._ Now.”

It was a faint voice that he recognised from somewhere. But as he looked around, there was no one but him in this place. Slowly he stepped away from the door, suddenly aware of the fact that he had broken into cold sweat.

“ _Turn around. Don’t come here again.”_

Noctis very, very desperately wanted to know who was speaking. It sounded distant, as if the speaker was talking through a thick blanket. He opened his mouth, but only a thin croak escaped him.

“ _Go find your Shield. Tell him to barricade this entire place off until you confidently say that you are ready to face it. Stay away from the Crystal. That cursed thing’s call… it’s irresistible.”_

He recognised the voice now and understood why it sounded so muffled. He dug into his pockets and held the Ring of the Lucii in his shaking hands. Stared at it, unable to leave as King Somnus’ voice had demanded just now.

For a long few minutes it was dead silent in this almost forsaken place where they kept the Crystal they had so carefully extracted from Gralea. This dead little thing that his family protected and in turn it protected them. The thin thrum of magical energy that it seemed to emanate even now as he held the Ring of the Lucii that allowed him to control it.

The Ring of the Lucii.

If he slipped that on, maybe he could—

“ _Stop!”_

It felt like someone had splashed cold water in his cold face for a split second, but then he realised that something had grabbed his face instead.

He was barely more than a fuzzy outline that he could see through, but Noctis found himself staring into the Founder King’s eyes. Whatever his expression was, it was rather distorted. The man seemed half stuck between a snarl and a pained grin—it was all teeth and some undefined emotion that Noctis did not understand. He blinked a few times at that spectre of a king long dead before the Mystic leaned in. Gods, he was so cold. Like icy water—a rock.

“All the curses I put on my bloodline; yet this might be the worst of them. Resist the call. I beg of you. That hunk of rock holds the Draconian and the path to more blood on that forsaken throne.”

Noctis held his breath for a moment. Exhaled slowly. “The… Draconian…?”

He felt as if he had been dumped into cold water. All of a sudden his senses snapped back properly; the urge to go to the Crystal or to put on the Ring of the Lucii gone. He was painfully aware of how sweat-soaked his hair already was, how _utterly cold_ the Mystic’s transparent hands truly were.

The man let go, and only just now Noctis noticed that his feet weren’t even touching the ground.

He took a step forwards, trying to wrap his head around what had just happened—but apparently that sent the wrong message. The Mystic landed immediately, stomped a foot on the ground even if it did not let out a single sound; he was dead and did not truly exist in this world any longer, after all. But Noctis _felt_ that shift in power.

He reacted automatically, as if something was calling out to him. It was differently this time around, less an urgent cry that he needed to be at the Crystal immediately or that he needed to put the Ring of the Lucii on. But he dropped the ring on the ground and called a royal arm to his hands. It was as if someone guided his hands.

What truly shocked him back to reality once again was a bright flash.

The Ring of the Lucii glittered on the ground as he and the Founder King both pointed the Blade of the Mystic at one another. King Somnus’ blade was just as transparent as he was, seemingly unreal and definitely looked like a prized and well-maintained weapon. Noctis’ blade on the other hand looked old and worn, like an heirloom that had survived centuries unlike its owner. He was fully aware that he must have looked kind of surprised, if not downright stupid with how he had to hold the blade with both his hands. King Somnus on the other hand held it with one, perfectly still—with his teeth bared in a snarl. A far cry from the story of the Mystic who had wandered the continent together with the Oracle and then met his unfortunate end on the sword of a traitor.

“Uhm….”

“Not. Another. Step,” the man hissed. On the ground, the Ring of the Lucii seemed to shimmer for a split moment, and Noctis looked at it.

Whatever was going on here, it was definitely unsettling to watch. This thing had been on the hand of every single ruler; he considered it his father’s ring first and foremost. But his father had likely considered it his grandfather’s, and so on and so on. Right down to the Mystic and his son, whoever that king was again. He kind of vanished in the pages of history between his famous father and his famous son. For a split second he wondered if the Mystic’s son had felt the same—but then he was painfully aware of the sword pointed at him.

Noctis dropped the Blade of the Mystic. It clattered against the ground loudly, ear-splittingly loudly. He took a few steps backwards under the almost piercing glare of Somnus Lucis Caelum.

He had many questions, but one thing he was starting to understand a little. He’d wondered how a man barely taller than him had managed to overpower Ardyn. Then again, the statement of knife in the back should have made it clear in the first place, and Noctis exhaled slowly.

“Right, right. Gotcha. Stay away from the Crystal.”

King Somnus narrowed his eyes. “The Ring of the Lucii. ‘Twould be best if you left it somewhere safe rather than carry it around with you. Otherwise you will find yourself in a precarious situation of being drawn here time and time again by the irresistible call of the Crystal.”

The curse he put on his own bloodline.

“Okay, will do. Could you lower the sword, please?”

This time the grin did not just look lopsided. It looked wrong.

He did not lower the sword.

Noctis understood what that was supposed to mean, but he still felt very uneasy. Thus he quickly bowed his head, turned around and left this isolated part of Lestallum.

* * *

The atmosphere in Lestallum changed ever so slightly after that strange encounter. The people seemed a bit more nervous than they had been before, some of them sticking to the more brightly lit parts of the city rather than going about their usual daily business. It felt like a stutter in the strange normalcy they had all found in the dark—and the last two times such stutters had occurred, Cor had been found dead and Ignis had been found alive. Noctis caught himself restlessly bouncing his leg as he waited for the daily status report from Aranea.

Iris at least had managed to forward a message from Tenebrae of all things, saying that Ravus had collapsed and was yet to recover from this. Noctis had pointed out that it had been four damned days since they had vanished without a warning, for which the unusually subdued-sounding Ravus in the background apologised. Noctis let Iris off with a warning, saying that next time they had better tell someone where they went and that Gladio was likely going to wash their heads anyway. Iris laughed it off—Ravus only groaned. At the very those two were accounted for.

Aranea called in, and Ignis remained unaccounted for. He had claimed that he had found what he had been looking for two days ago, and since then neither of the Niffs with him had gotten a single sign of life from him.

“It’s strange,” Loqi chipped in after Aranea repeated that there was absolutely nothing around, “we felt the ground shake, and ever since then it’s been precisely the same as it was before. Why is this stretch of land completely devoid of Daemons?”

“I dunno. Before the dark fell it was full of wyverns and huge birds. Like, humongous freakin’ birds,” Noctis muttered—at least Aranea laughed at that statement.

“Those creatures have to have gone somewhere. They cannot all have turned into Daemons that simply vanished from the place. Hells, just two months ago we dispatched a group of Glaives there to retrieve something, and they said they met half-Daemonised wyverns, I believe.” He heard Loqi drum his fingers on something in the airship near the communicator. “This isn’t some empire-initiated animal migration program. Something doesn’t add up here, and I do not like this one bit.”

Aranea only added that she also thought something was off, but she wasn’t going to rush out and look into it until Ignis came back—or a week had passed.

Gladio and Monica weren’t in the city—out on an urgent mission concerning Cape Caem with a bulk of the Glaives. Those that remained were on standby and trailing, with the exception of those that were able to properly heal. Those had been gathered up by the former hunters and were all in the greenhouse district learning about salves and the like; the people were hesitant to rely on magic. They hadn’t really been able to use it to this degree before, and there was no guarantee that they would be able to cast it until the end of their days. This was all in the event of the surprise gift from Lunafreya vanishing just as suddenly as it had popped up. Ravus, Ignis, Iris, Aranea, Loqi—the streets were completely devoid of any familiar faces. Even less familiar ones like Biggs and Wedge and some of the more prominent other people, including the thrice-damned politicians Noctis loathed to hang around were all gone.

If the atmosphere weren’t already odd then Noctis would have definitely felt strange wandering through the streets uncertain what to think of any of this.

Once again he found himself wishing Cor were here; the man had had the infallible skill to appear whenever something was off and always appeared with an answer to most questions. But Noctis remained alone in the streets of Lestallum with the rare civilian bowing to him quickly and then continuing their day.

Was this supposed to be some sort of omen? Was someone going to wind up dead—or was an unexpected survivor going to arrive soon?

* * *

He knew in an instant that he was dreaming because the sun was shining. He had no idea where he was, truly he did not, but just feeling the sun on his skin made him realise there was no way he was awake. Still, Noctis turned his face towards the sun and enjoyed the feeling. Gods, he had complained about the heat so much—but it was cold in the eternal dark. So cold.

The morning sun as he stood beside the cleft in the earth was a blessing. Somewhere behind him he heard the rustle of a wheat field in the breeze. That was another thing that had died down completely. The air was still and cold, unmoving just as the dark that covered the planet was. It was so strange to think about; those who were infected all grew feverish and restless, but the dark that started all of this was utterly cold and immobile.

He had a vague idea where he was, but once he started looking around he realised that this did not look like anywhere in Lucis he knew. This deep canyon could only be a remnant of the Astral War; and only Lucis bore the scars of that. Niflheim, despite its alleged role as the seat of technological advancements of Solheim, had not been the centre stage of the Astral War. And at the height of it—

“And at the height of the Astral War did the Draconian’s sword strike true; it tore earth asunder and cast the Infernian to the pits of hell itself.”

Noctis whirled around.

“Or so the legend goes. It oft left me wondering whether or not it did define what we picture hell to be like—a fire-filled pit that devours the dead. It always sounded ridiculous to me, especially because death is cold. So very, _very_ cold.”

A tall man draped in royal black that was styled very similarly to King Somnus stood at the edge of the wheat field. Noctis knew instantly that it was another of his ancestors, but he had no name to give this man. He definitely did not remember hearing about a tall, brown-haired king; the only thing that was familiar were those unsettlingly dark blue eyes. But now in the sunlight they did not look half as terrifying as they did on King Somnus—for a moment Noctis wondered if all the Lucii had these dark eyes because of magical nonsense.

The man walked over to stand next to him, and Noctis also turned back around to look into the canyon now.

“Noctis Lucis Caelum. Many of us did wonder what we would be calling the Chosen, eventually. But when the time came, we found ourselves unable to call him anything but Chosen.” The man shook his head. “It is dehumanising to be called by your title only. As if you are a slab of meat to be bartered for, naught more than a token one would trade in for something else. You are the coin the gods wish to trade in for a cure ‘gainst the dark cloud they themselves could have prevented. And yet, most of us do not call you by your name despite the fact many of us are not happy about it or have known the humiliation of being a nameless entity ourselves. I do apologise on the behalf of your ancestors, King Noctis. In advance.”

“In… advance?”

This man’s smile was softer than the Founder King’s, but something about it looked off on him as well. But rather than simply unsettling, this one’s merely looked… too cold. Like a mask.

“Merely being called ‘Chosen’ by six men and women of your line ought to be strange.”

Noctis blinked a few times. “Isn’t that what we descendants do to you as well? Like, I dunno what your title is, but the Founder King’s just called the Founder King or the Mystic. Sure, we remember his name’s Somnus, but do we ever call him that? Nah. I mean, no we don’t. Just as you all remember my name’s Noctis, but call me, uh, Chosen.”

The man laughed softly; Noctis was starting to realise that maybe it was just his voice that sounded so strangely monotone—because this time he genuinely looked amused. “What a cruel title to bequeath a young man who was indeed chosen—chosen to die.”

That sounded quite a lot like what Ignis said. Noctis turned his head to the other king, and the man closed his eyes and tilted his head from one side to the other, humming slightly. He was desperately trying to remember if there was a member of the Lucii that fit this man’s description, but Noctis was completely drawing at a blank. So few descriptions of what the kings and queens had looked like survived—or were entirely missing as with the Rogue, given her background—and nothing seemed to match this one in particular.

“Uh—“

His train of thought was interrupted by the rising sun suddenly vanishing. It all gave way to all too familiar darkness, to the haunting cold of a world in suspension. Noctis shivered, but the other king merely got on his knees.

“’Tis strange. I had thought the Messengers owed their obedience to the Six alone, yet here you stand, guarded by one of them even in your sleep. So many existences were touched by yours, so many of them overlap—to a degree that even fate we had thought immovable seems to crumble. What is it about you, Noctis, that makes even father offer the help we wanted to give all along but could not because of our lack of corporeal form?”

Father.

Seeing Carbuncle again was already shocking enough, but he suddenly realised who he was talking to.

“Fotis Lucis Caelum, the Tranquil!” The second King of Lucis, and one with a rather mystifying name.

In the same moment that Noctis slapped his hands over his mouth, Fotis narrowed his eyes a little and watched Carbuncle bounce over to Noctis. “Indeed. The world has ever been eager to bestow titles upon us. The Mystic. Followed by the Tranquil. Who in turn is followed by the Conqueror. Completely forgoing the facts that we were things other than the titles—the Mystic was a haunted man, the Tranquil was quite lonely indeed, the Conqueror was eager to outdo his father and his father’s father; the Chosen Martyr does not want to die.” He was starting to understand how Fotis had gained his title, but there was something dissonant about this calmness. “I came to see you to issue a warning.”

“A… warning?” Carbuncle had hopped onto his shoulder by now, the Messenger chirping happily. Noctis watched as Fotis stood back up, and for a moment he thought there was the slightest odd smile that his father had on his face on the man’s features. But it might has been his dream trying to draw a parallel between father and son who seemed so unlike one another.

“Much as the desire for revenge can drive someone mad; guilt and guilt alone can twist a person beyond recognition. For the dead this comes too late; we are absorbed by it. But for the living….”

Noctis blinked a few times.

Fotis shook his head. “Your worst enemy in the dark is not the dark itself. It is the drive for vengeance and the urge to atone. If disproportionate retribution meets the wrong person seeking to settle things with their conscience, the hope for a destiny changed will die on our throne with you.”

That was… ominous. There were a few people who could be the guilty ones; from the obvious Ignis to Ravus, even to Talcott to a degree. The kid looked haunted these days, but masked it with his still warm smiles. Then, of course, Libertus and the less obvious but still decidedly guilty-looking when he thought it was only him and the Niffs Loqi. There were so many people in Lestallum that Noctis knew who could be the ones seeking atonement.

The one seeking revenge could only be Ardyn, given what King Somnus had said.

He wanted to ask something, but everything went blurry. The only thing that remained sharp and very, very real was Carbuncle on his shoulder; he felt it gently bonk its head against his.

“ _It’s time to wake up, Noct.”_

* * *

Iris and Ravus returned, and much like Noctis had said Gladio was immediately there to chew his sister out. She’d only shoved a note into Noctis’ hands before her brother dragged her off.

He looked at the note and then turned to look at Ravus with a deep frown on his face.

Ravus still did not look particularly well, all things considered. He was pale to begin with and his eyes and hair colour together with Niflheim white had usually left him looking like some sort of poltergeist. It was likely what Ravus did not intend to look like; Noctis assumed that he had wanted to look like a spirit of vengeance. Right now he looked frail even for a guy his size and build—and he was slightly hunched over. Normally Ravus out of all people stood straight and made himself look as tall and imposing as possible.

“Are you _sure_ you’re feeling alright?”

“It could be better, I assume, but yes.” As if to drive the point home, Ravus straightened up a little. He still looked unwell despite all that. “I won’t be keeling over again any time soon, rest assured.”

Noctis crossed his arms. “Keel over all you want as long as you don’t die on us randomly.”

For a moment, silence. Then Ravus broke into laughter. Any other time Noctis would have been offended by that, but he was taken aback by how _genuinely relieved_ Ravus sounded. The man was already not a very emotional person to begin with, but he was openly showing something that he would have considered a weakness in the open.

“I do not plan on dying _randomly_ any time soon.”

Noctis waved Iris’ note around. “Well, if you need help we can all try our best, but there’s a few good Glaive psychiatrists that came here after Insomnia. Ask Libertus, I’m pretty sure that he knows which one handled Nyx Ulric and his flashbacks.” There was just the slightest moment of Ravus’ expression darkening, but he said nothing. “But yeah. Iris said there was something else?”

Ravus crossed his arms, though it more looked like he was hugging himself. He averted his gaze and looked at the airship he had landed here not too long ago, and then settled for a long and heavy sigh.

“I was wondering if you would help me find Rhea Scientia.”

“Uhm… why that?”

“You’ll find out soon enough, I suppose, but I do not recall which sector she lives in.”

It was a rather secluded corner of Lestallum, one that Ravus definitely did not spend a lot of time in. Noctis on the other hand had had spent a good amount of time in there back when he had been confined to the city. The High Commander turned Oracle followed him slowly and quietly, but despite the fact he was still hunched over and pale he at least did not seem like he would faint again any time soon. Iris’ note said that he had likely collapsed from forcing himself to go with her despite being very mentally unwell, and she felt rather guilty for having insisted on it. Just having read the word guilty had made Noctis flinch—he remembered the warning the Tranquil had issued two nights ago. Could he have meant Iris?

But… she had Gladio to wash her head for her. Iris might have had her own problems but she was not someone who stewed on her past mistakes too much. In a sense she was still the little girl who sneaked out of the Citadel to follow a cat. She addressed her guilt when she was ready for it, and usually something good came from it. She would be apologising to Ravus before long if past incidents were anything to go by.

Noctis shook his head a little and marched on, Ravus following even when he increased the pace. Honestly for someone looking as unwell as Ravus, he was matching a quite brisk pace. He slowed down once he caught a familiar person turn a corner up ahead.

“Ah. Taking a walk, I guess,” Noctis muttered and then jogged up ahead. “Hey, Mrs Scientia!”

He had thought that Ravus looked lousy.

He was mistaken.

Everyone had said that now that Ignis was back in one piece and talking to her she would get better—and they had left it at that. There were so many more people that needed more immediate attention than Rhea Scientia; a woman who had lived through a lot but still had her son alive. Noctis froze when she turned around and he saw the fainted glint in her eyes. He’d only come across her a few times back in Insomnia but she definitely looked like a noble then. Prim and proper, yet somehow despite all that she managed to look friendly; that was something that not many nobles managed. Not even Ignis himself managed to look quite as approachable as his mother, something that his uncle joked about once or twice.

That woman right now looked like a horrific caricature. Vacant, glazed-over eyes. She was visibly flushed—a fever.

His heart skipped a beat as he remembered what the Niffs had said. That they would be leaving the city before they caused trouble down the line. This particular part of Lestallum had the only part where someone who could not warp could climb over the wall and get out of the city, it was how Ignis had gotten himself out of the city.

“Your… Majesty,” she said. It sounded raw, somehow, like her throat was dry.

He froze as he looked at her, uncertain what to do or what Ravus wanted to do. Ravus in fact rushed past him.

“Gods, nearly too late. Please, excuse our intrusion, but there is something I wish to do.”

Nothing about this was making any sense. He had no idea what exactly was going on; he completely missed whatever conversation Rhea and Ravus had for a few minutes before she hesitantly took off a glove and offered Ravus her hand.

Looking at it snapped him back into reality. Her skin looked charred somehow, with dark splotches where there had been freckles before. Ravus took her hand gently with his metal hand, then put his real one over it. Noctis had seen that gesture before—Queen Sylva had held his hands the same years ago in Tenebrae. Luna was a lot more personal, often cupping people’s faces or even bringing their foreheads together.

“Blessed stars of life and light,” the words sounded strange coming from the former High Commander of all people despite the fact that they were his family’s prayer, “deliver us from darkness’ blight.”

For a moment nothing happened. Then the familiar cold gold light that he associated with Luna and Altissia nowadays spread from Ravus’ remaining hand.

He’d watched Ravus heal before. The man was efficient but very disconnected from whatever it was that he was doing. Some chalked it up to him being one of the unexpected recipients of magic that were rare but were starting to pop up allegedly all across Eos now. Noctis knew that it was mostly linked to the fact that Ravus himself associated that magic with his mother and his sister, both dead women he had desperately wanted to keep safe against all odds. Issues like that were often addressed as he and the other trained with Elemancy—Ignis himself had said that a disconnect from magic brought complications with it. Of all people Cor Leonis had nearly died when King Mors died and the then newly crowned King Regis had reconnected him to the Crystal’s magic. A simple complication, a simple mental blockade against something—in Cor’s case accepting that the king he had sworn himself to had died without him even being there—and it had all nearly gone to hell. To the very day he died Cor had remained hesitant about using magic; while it made his exploits all the more impressive there was definitely something that many Glaives and Crownsguards and now hunters learned from that story.

Ravus’ raw skill was impressive. He could mend flesh back together in ways that pulled people from the brink of death, something that Ignis had said Ardyn was able to do as well. Despite all this, he seemed unable to cleanse the Scourge; not that Oracles were able to deal with cases that were even only slightly more progressed than Ignis’ mother.

He saw the fine gold burn away the black ichor. He saw the feverish glaze vanish from Rhea Scientia’s eyes, and the unhealthy flush of her skin also vanished. Ravus gently squeezed her hand and let go—Noctis dove in to make certain Ravus would not fall over when he dangerously dipped to the side. He cracked a smile at the terrified-looking Rhea.

“Whoops! C’mon, High Commander, Sir. Back on your feet.” Ravus only mumbled an apology. “Sorry ‘bout that, Mrs Scientia!”

Rhea only blinked at him. Blinked at Ravus.

Then she sunk to her knees, almost sobbing out a string of “Thank you”s.

* * *

The next transmission from Aranea arrived when he, Gladio, Prompto, Iris and Ravus were all crammed into that room and laughing a day later. Ravus still looked exhausted, yes, but also like a huge weight had been lifted off his shoulders. Noctis noticed the definitely Tenebrae-crafted necklace that held the by now familiar sigil of a King or Yore around his neck when he leaned his head against the wall with a laugh on his lips. Perhaps this had not been the correct place to congratulate him on learning how to cleanse the Scourge, but none of their rooms were really appropriate, and Gladio _insisted_ on drinking. It wasn’t every day that they got to celebrate something entirely good.

Noctis nearly missed the call. He had Prompto answer it while Iris patted Ravus’ back comfortingly and encouragingly while Gladio shoved a pint over.

Aranea’s voice crackled through the transmission static and over the heavy noise of an airship in flight. Something shattered in the background. Everyone in the room stopped what they were doing when they heard Loqi’s distinct voice mutter a curse.

“A’ight, boys, hold on tight, this one’s gonna be— oof! Yeah, anyway, hey there, Majesty ‘n Shortcake! Got your advisor, everything’s fine ‘n peachy and uh—yeah, yeah, I was about to mention them, get off my back! Back into shooting position, shoo! Yeah, anyway, as I was gonna say ‘fore Tummelt here interrupted me so _rudely,_ we got trouble.”

“Trouble might be an understatement, there’s _more.”_

“Since when can you fucking see in the dark!?”

“I know what you’re thinking, but I promise, this might just be related to the—ah, dammit, twenty degrees north if you will, Loqi, that should put it between their eyes—related to the whole nonsense I _just_ went over before they popped out!”

“Magic bullshit?”

“Magic bullshit,” both Loqi and Ignis chimed in. Something howled in the background and Aranea yelped, likely reaching for the steering console.

“Okay, cool. Anyway! Once we gain proper altitude we’ll be out of danger in about ten minutes, but. Seems we got escapees from the Niflheim labs en route to Insomnia! The flying bastards, whatever those freaks in the labs called ‘em. They oughta be passing Lestallum in an hour or two, just thought we’d let you know that your advisor’s alive and these things on the prowl. Anyway, Highwind out, we’ll be a bit delayed because we need a ridiculous altitude to get out of their range!”

With that, the communicator shut down. He heard the very distinct sound of glass shattering because Ravus had dropped the pint that Gladio had been trying to force into his hands.

Daemons that escaped from Niflheim labs were definitely not a good sign—much less flying ones that seemingly gave an experienced pilot like Aranea trouble.


	52. VERSE 2 - Flight of the past sins; yours and theirs.

He had not believed her when she had said that. Countless voices had risen into ringing laughter when Ignis had asked if the voice was messing with him. Only then did he focus on the strange flowers that bloomed on the walls; he had considered them just an oddity of this place along with the butterflies. But this was the same room he had come in through; the flowers had not been there when he had come through here.

It clicked that moment, and Ignis had had to sit down. Somehow by understanding the very nature of these spells he seemed to have learned how to cast an illusion subconsciously. Indeed, as he waved his hands around slightly the flowers swayed ever so slightly, changed colour when he willed them to, and caught flame the second he even considered it. The fire very much looked and felt similar to the flames of Elemancy that he had known for nearly all his life, but something about them was different.

Anyone would mistake these for real flame.

After a while of silence, the voice that had told him the most rose again, this time seemingly closer than before. _“You seem shaken.”_

Ignis mumbled an agreement.

“ _How dire is it? The world beyond, the world we all loved once wrapped in eternal darkness?”_

He rolled his eyes. “Not much worse than this place. Stagnant, but certain things are changing. People who once fought one another stand together now, just as former allies are driven apart. But in the end, it is dark and cold and quiet. So very, very quiet.” Unless there were Daemons chasing something or other nearby, but somehow he felt like that one was a given.

Indeed, the voice laughed softly—surprisingly not very amused-sounding, but it was a laugh regardless. _“Were the circumstances any different and you had been born in the past, I doubt not for a second that Ardyn would have taken you as his student without a moment of hesitation. That student_ _of_ _mine was ever quite the eccentric fool, but he liked people who could talk back to him.”_

Ignis narrowed his eyes. “So you were his teacher?”

“ _Natural magical skill was rare but still came up in a few children. Unchecked it was dangerous. His parents called me from across the sea to teach him; it was at my behest that he started his pilgrimage that concluded in him reaching this very point. Truth be told I had assumed that he did not have the natural talent needed to learn it, but then again you and I are more similar in where our strengths lie than I and Ardyn were.”_

He tilted his head a little. The way this voice sounded was familiar. At least the gentleness of it; but with something looming behind that kindness.

Lunafreya’s voice was similar to that. She hid the harshness of the truths she spoke under her calm and gentle tone, her voice hid the fact that she could quite easily punch the living lights out of someone. This spirit sounded almost exactly the same—like silk hiding steel.

“Where our strengths lie, huh….”

“ _You have to understand but one thing about illusions. They cannot betray you as long as you keep your mind focused. Even in the depths of despair when all you can think of is that agony you feel, it keeps you focused. Cast it with hatred, cast it with joy, cast it with boundless love, with overwhelming hope, with utterly crushed disrespect for the living—the illusions will not betray you as long as you can remain aware of them. Lose that focus, lose the knowledge, and you will be lost to the tides of time. All those who once lost their way… they stay here. Guardians, casters, it matters little. Every soul that Pitioss touches that loses its way remains here.”_

Ignis closed his eyes. He had never met her, but he sincerely doubted that Queen Aulea had lost her mind. Which in turn meant that she would not be here—for a moment he felt disappointed; he had always wanted to meet her. But there was something more pressing than lamenting the fact that the late queen was definitely late and not stuck in a forsaken ancient ruin that was full to the brim with the spirits of people who were related to it in some way. “I go mad, I get stuck in eternal limbo. Eaten up by my own illusions.” For a moment he thought he felt a hand brush his shoulder. “That’s… not a good deal, all things considered.”

A laugh. _“He said the exact same thing. A pity that you will not have a teacher going forward; your scathing personality already tells me that you and Ardyn are the same in many ways.”_

He opened his eyes again, and his breath caught in his throat. It was more than a faint outline this time around, but it was still not completely comprehensible to him. Was that what this woman, Ardyn’s teacher in the magic arts if her words were to be believed, had looked like over two millennia ago? She’d looked rather similar to Lunafreya in many ways, but now that he was able to get a better look at her, the differences were more apparent. There was a good-natured grin on her face, something that the quiet and serious Lunafreya would not be caught with while looking at a stranger. She was definitely a Tenebraen which would explain why she had been called to Lucis from beyond the sea.

“ _But even a bad deal can be twisted and turned until it is beneficial. I would dare saying you stand a better chance at not going mad than any of us present.”_

Whoever she was, she was definitely grinning at him—and Ignis was not sure whether that was a good thing or not. The dead couldn’t harm him, right? Then again, this entire place felt kind of off. They were contained here to teach the future generations, yet at the same time they were contained here to not wreak havoc upon the living.

“So I’m to be… some sort of acolyte, and all I have to do is learn by myself and not go mad?”

“ _Indeed.”_

“Well… I’ve been through worse.” He’d been to hell—and back. Perhaps he had not gazed deep enough into the abyss that was the Accursed, but this was a second abyss he would have to take a blind leap into. A bad deal, but one that he could use to get exactly the outcome that he wanted.

Ignis cracked a grin back at her. “Very well. Thank you for your guidance, Miss…?”

She gestured before vanishing from his sight. The power in the ruins shifted, and he heard the very distinct sound of rock grinding; likely opening his way back out again. _“Shoo. Don’t you have a King of Kings to save, Ignis of Lucis? I doubt there would be much that you could learn from Aera of Tenebrae, even if she was the Oracle’s childhood friend.”_

* * *

The first thing that hit him when he left the ruins was the fact that he _saw._

For a long moment he froze right where he stood, staring into the dark. Everything had been sort of blurry and too dark ever since he had lost his glasses. It all worked out because there wasn’t much in the finer details of the world when all he had to deal with were Daemons and Ardyn. But as he stood there pretty much on the doorstep of the ruins, he realised with a jolt of utter terror that he _saw._ Everything was crisp and sharp and it felt strangely not as dark as it had been before.

“ _Oh dear,”_ Lunafreya breathed, _“that is a most peculiar side-effect. Fear not, Ignis, you are not infected; I would know that much. But it would seem that illusory magic has a benefit or two for its wielder much like my bloodline’s has. The Crystal grants Noctis full immunity to the Scourge; my bloodline can tolerate intense amounts of pain before we break. But you… you get the benefit of seeing in the dark. Likely linked to seeing through your own illusions. Fascinating.”_

Ignis rubbed his temples. “Great. You think your brother’s gonna skewer me for seeing in the dark, as precaution?”

She laughed. _“Not if you explain yourself. I would hope he knows that seeing in the dark is just one of many symptoms of an infection. Seeing in the dark without fever or dulled mind does not equal a victim of the Scourge.”_

Not exactly the most comforting thing she could have said, but Ignis did not have the time to look a gift horse in the mouth just to see if his allies would kill it for something. He rolled his shoulders with a sigh and all but hopped down the stairs. There was the uncertain feeling that quite a lot of time had passed, but he did not feel weaker in any sense. It had felt like perhaps a few hours inside the ruins and he did not feel dehydrated the slightest but that did not have to mean anything. Perhaps a twisted sense of time just came with the magic as well.

In the distance he saw the lights of Aranea’s airship, which meant that even if several days had passed it had not been the week she had given him. That was good at least, he noted with a small smile as he started the trek back to the airship.

At around the halfway mark of the trip he stopped dead in his tracks. Ever since he shook off the shock of suddenly seeing in the dark something had felt wrong but not wrong enough that he paid attention to it.

The entire region had seemed to be completely empty. No Daemons, no other living things, not even some surviving lizards of the sort. Loqi had pointed out that it was completely ridiculous that there was absolutely nothing around them, especially given the results of a fairly recent mission set in the region. It had been rather close by now that Ignis thought about it, yet they had not come across a single Daemon. He stood there perfectly straight, watched his surroundings with narrowed eyes.

He stopped breathing entirely as he realised what exactly was going on here in the Ravatogh region. It was true that the ruins contained magic, but that did not mean that nothing ever escaped it. There had not been someone eligible to receive the power since the time Ardyn had been alive, likely even just a teenager or young adult—he remembered how the earth had shaken beneath them once Ignis pinpointed the ruins properly.

Ravatogh wasn’t empty.

It was just wrapped in an illusion that kept Daemons from seeing them and them from seeing Daemons.

Ignis broke into a sprint for the last leg of the journey, calling for Aranea and Loqi once he was close enough to the airship. Indeed, Aranea was standing next to the airship checking something while Loqi was sitting on the walkway with his legs and his arms crossed and seemingly deep in thought. They both perked up to look for Ignis, and he skittered to a halt just in front of the walkway.

“Well, well, well, look what the cat—“

“I think I understand why there’s no Daemons around here,” he immediately cut Aranea off.

The two Niffs exchanged a look; Aranea with a raised eyebrow and Loqi with a deep scowl.

Before either of them could say anything else, Ignis gestured vaguely. “It’s hard to explain. They’re very much present but we cannot see them—nor can they see us. That’s what Pitioss held. It held magic. Magic strong enough to cloak an entire region in an illusion that affects everything in it.”

Aranea crossed her arms and closed her eyes with a grumble.

Loqi meanwhile stood up. “I feel like I should be surprised. Somehow, though, I don’t doubt it for one moment. Lucis is a strange country. But it raises the question: Can we break out of it?”

Ignis blinked a few times. Aranea was nodding at Loqi, saying that it was exactly what she was wondering about as well.

“I… I think so, yes. You just… need to give me a moment. Unfortunately as things stand I am… an untaught mage, so—“

“Okay, hold your Chocobos for a hot sec. _Untrained mage,_ are we now?” Aranea was glaring at him. “How about you start from the top while we get the airship ready?”

Thus he began retelling what had happened. He left out some details that were not important to the story itself such as being able to see in the dark, cut short most of the wandering about inside and kept the talking about what it was in the end short. He finished saying that unfortunate as it was, the only living mage who could have taught him properly was Ardyn Izunia. For a moment Aranea remained quiet, then she nodded.

“Okay, I think I gotcha. This is what you were looking for, your got your answer, so all in all a mission complete, huh?”

Ignis cracked a grin at her as she shrugged.

Loqi only raised his eyebrows at that. “That’s the first time I see you smile like you mean it.”

For a few minutes they were awkwardly silent as they set up everything to get the airship moving, before finally Aranea put a hand on the communicator. “So, that illusion. You think you can crack it before we report you alive and well?”

A test if he was telling the truth, he presumed. Ignis nodded slowly and closed his eyes. It was surprisingly hard to focus on what felt off in the region with the airship engine rumbling beneath his feet, but eventually he figured out something. Whatever the true state of this region was, it was under a heavy net made completely out of magical threads. He tried poking at the net with his focus. A shiver went through it, but it did not budge; the strange feeling of something being off remained. He stretched out a hand to help him with his next attempt; he tried picking the net up. He managed to lift it for a moment, but the net itself proved too heavy. Immovable, then.

There had to be a weak point. There always was. Cor’s weakness had been magic in general. Prompto did not mesh well with ice and fire. Gladio did not mesh well with it in general. Noctis had more of a talent for warping, whereas his father was the more talented mage. Ardyn definitely had a weakness as well, it likely tied into how he had become the Accursed. This magical net had to have a weak point. He only needed to find it… and jab something through it to unravel the thread. Surely enough as the airship gained altitude, Ignis found that weak spot. It were the ruins themselves, and he put his hand on that thread. The entire net shivered once again.

Snipping it was surprisingly easy.

Immediately all hell broke loose; Ignis snapped his eyes back open the moment the shrill beeping of the alarms started. Loqi had jumped to his feet and ran up to beside Aranea; the mercenary herself was cursing up a storm while she reached for several levers and buttons all at once.

“The hell’s this!?”

“Wh… what!?”

Ignis looked out of the window. Indeed, there were hundreds of specks moving about now, all homing in on their previous ground position. He could almost hear the disappointed howling of Daemons. But none of them seemed to be what the radar was picking up.

Loqi also turned to look out of the window—and froze. “Ah… ah.” He was clearly talking to himself, seeing how he raised his hand a little and then dropped it again. For a split moment Ignis tried to figure out what he was looking at, but the former Niff military commander whirled around and stormed past Ignis. “Lab escapees; twenty in the immediate vicinity. Are we equipped to shoot ‘em down, Highwind?”

“Hell no!”

Loqi ran and snatched one of the weapons off the wall. Ignis had never thought about why there were weapons in this part of an airship, but then again he had spent more time in the loading area than anywhere else. He caught the weapon as Loqi tossed it to him.

“You know how to load a weapon like this? If you do, do that for me. Highwind, shooting position!”

It looked similar to the flare gun that Prompto used. Except this thing seemed to be a cross between sniper rifle and rocket launcher of all things; a flare cannon, perhaps? Whatever it was, it definitely looked unwieldy but familiar enough for him to understand how to load it. Ignis was not good with machinery but he had listened to and watched what Prompto did at camp enough to vaguely understand this enough to load it. Not that either Niff really noticed while Ignis fiddled with it. Loqi was erratically moving about while Aranea was tapping the communicator.

Then she moved and made the entire airship sway. Loqi cursed and slammed whatever it was that he had grabbed just now back to where he had gotten it from, and Ignis dropped the flare cannon. He only saw dark wings blot out the outside and with a jolt of terror realised that the radar was not picking quite a lot of these things up.

Before he could point them out, Loqi tossed him some more ammunition, gestured at the flares again, and turned back to what it was that he was trying to pick up. Aranea’s communicator beeped—a signal that the receiving end of the call had finally picked it up just as she muttered something to herself—likely since there was another one coming their direction.

“A’ight, boys, hold on tight, this one’s gonna be,” the airship turned sharply while also a lot of altitude all of a sudden. Loqi dropped what he had been trying to grab and loudly cursed. “Oof! Yeah, anyway, hey there, Majesty ‘n Shortcake! Got your advisor, everything’s fine ‘n peachy and,” Aranea stopped again when Loqi grabbed her shoulder and told her to cut the damned small talk already, “uh—yeah, yeah, I was about to mention them, get off my back! Back into shooting position, shoo! Yeah, anyway, as I was gonna say ‘fore Tummelt here interrupted me so _rudely,_ we got trouble.”

Loqi all but ripped the flare cannon thing out of Ignis’ hands after kicking the door Ignis had been sitting beside open.

Instead he turned to look at Aranea. The radar not picking up the ones in the distance that he could clearly see was dangerous. “Trouble might be an understatement, there’s _more.”_

Aranea fumbled with the controls for a moment; the airship swerved dangerously as they dodged another one. Yet somehow despite all of this she threw a glance over her shoulder—though it was more a nasty accusatory glare than anything else. He… had forgotten to mention that he could see in the dark. “Since when can you fucking see in the dark!?”

“I know what you’re thinking, but I promise, this might just be related to the—ah,” Ignis began, trying to soothe her nerves, but at the same time he saw one of the flares missing one of these strange flying Daemons, “dammit, twenty degrees north if you will, Loqi, that should put it between their eyes—related to the whole nonsense I _just_ went over before they popped out!”

Aranea wasn’t used to magic being mentioned so casually. Niflheim and Accordo lacked any sort of magical powers they could harness; Lucis had the Crystal and Tenebrae the Oracles. Yet somehow despite all the evidence that magic existed, even after having slain a goddess and having doomed their country to eternal winter, most Niffs did not give a damn about magic. They saw it as an obstacle at best, as something that made no sense at worst. Even after having spent all this time amongst people who could cast, Aranea was definitely not a person who fully grasped these concepts.

She’d accepted his explanations of Pitioss, claiming that she didn’t have to understand it at all. Thus, her following words were not surprising to Ignis at all as he put a hand on the gun to help Loqi am better: “Magic bullshit?”

“Magic bullshit,” he and the Niff beside him both said at at the same time, leaving it at that. At least the flare hit its target; the flying Daemon that had been on its way towards them let out a howl and changed its course to get away. Loqi grinned at Ignis for a moment before they locked onto their next target.

Aranea only sighed. “Okay, cool. Anyway! Once we gain proper altitude we’ll be out of danger in about ten minutes, but. Seems we got escapees from the Niflheim labs en route to Insomnia! The flying bastards, whatever those freaks in the labs called ‘em. They oughta be passing Lestallum in an hour or two, just thought we’d let you know that your advisor’s alive and these things on the prowl. Anyway, Highwind out, we’ll be a bit delayed because we need a ridiculous altitude to get out of their range!”

She slammed the communicator off.

“I think the proper lab code was something like AT0026-740-WPHA1.” Loqi leaned slightly more to the left, away from Ignis.

“Did I fucking ask? Blow ‘nother light between their eyes while I get us higher up, dumbass!”

Despite how dangerous this situation was, Ignis laughed.

He hated being around people—but at the same time, he had missed being around people who weren’t Ardyn.

* * *

“How come you knew the proper lab designation of these things?”

Aranea rubbed her temples when Ignis asked that.

“AT0026-740-WPHA1,” she said while Loqi stared a hole into the airship floor, “Aerial Type 0026-740 Weak Point High Altitude 1. As opposed to Aerial Type 0026-740 Weak Point High Altitude, its much less successful predecessor. The one’s there to signify that this one’s the better model, clearly, but hell if we know what the number mumbo jumbo means in detail. We weren’t part of Besithia’s teams.”

He blinked. “Besithia’s teams created these?”

Loqi closed his eyes. “Yes. Non-naturally-occurring Daemons were all bred in the labs, most of their skills based on the specimens teams like Highwind’s mercenaries brought in. Their highest claim to fame are the Diamond Weapons that lay waste to Insomnia. Whatever those flying bastards were supposed to be, no clue. When Besithia hatched these, Lucis had already… fallen prey to our army.”

“Tummelt’s department and my crew worked together to take some first model escapees out before the Crown City fell, but those bastards are tough customers. Could rival your flying hurricanes, ‘cept we could mass produce ours while your flying birds of fucking shit up were, well. Birds.”

He frowned a little. “How much does the rest of Lestallum know about this?”

Now it was Loqi’s turn to rub his temples. “Much like you, we do not tell the full stories of everything. Besides, Highwind and I are grunts in the greater scheme of the empire. We know shreds and morsels where we were involved. If you wanna wring information out of someone, the High Commander’s your go-to-man. Not that he’s gonna say much.”

“Some things are better left unsaid, Ignis. You of all people should know that better than anyone else.”

* * *

He could still just barely make them out in the distance. Those things were _huge_ and stood out against the blighted sky; even if that was mostly linked to his sudden ability to see in the dark.

All of Lestallum seemed on the move. Civilians and Glaives alike hushed down the streets talking about those enormous flying Daemons. More than one person from Insomnia said that it reminded them of the day the city had fallen. Aranea’s scowl only got deeper the more people said it while Loqi went from grim to almost skittish by the time they reached the room that Biggs and Wedge had told them they would find the others.

Ignis threw a look over his shoulder into the direction of Insomnia once again, but by now the Daemons had vanished.

Aranea opened the door just in time to hear Gladio slam his open hands on the table. “And you were planning on telling us that _when exactly!?”_

Whatever conversation they were having, it definitely did not look like it had gone well. Noctis very pointedly stared at the table, Ravus had his eyes closed and a scowl on his face, Iris and Prompto were huddled together and urgently discussing something while Gladio had jumped to his feet.

“Some things are better left unsaid, Amicitia.”

“Are you _fucking_ _kidding me_ , Fleuret?”

Ravus snapped his eyes open. “No, I am not. Even the High Commander was _not_ privy to all the intel on what the _hell_ Besithia’s department did. Much less the _Deputy High Commander._ And in case you had forgotten, by the time the city had fallen I definitely forfeited any sort of interest in what the madman did in favour of chasing down Noctis and Lunafreya! Yes! Signing that permission was a grave error, I am _fully_ aware of that, but I had thought that _particular_ venture abandoned! It’s why I sent Aranea to Niflheim to check if Besithia was still up and running—I sent her on a headhunt! Yet she returned with empty hands, with no lead on where the man was, and the most important production facility flattened since darkness fell.”

Ah.

Aranea and Loqi shifted uncomfortably. It explained why she had said that some things were better left unsaid—the empire had been manipulated from the get-go the moment their technology started skyrocketing. Verstael Besithia was a mad man, yes, but in the end Ardyn’s influence had definitely led to a lot of things at once. Ravus signing a permission of some sort, the creation of these flying things… suddenly he understood.

Ignis cleared his throat. “If I may—Gladiolus, Ravus. It is likely that Ardyn is the one drawing these Daemons to Lucis and not their creator sending them to cause trouble; I can assure you that Verstael Besithia is dead and buried beneath the rubble of his own production facility.”

All eyes in the room turned to him. Gladio was glaring, Ravus looked confused, Prompto and Iris exchanged a dark look, and Noctis looked parts relieved and parts terrified.

“I slit his throat with my own hands shortly after we, ah, uh, _parted_ in Zegnautus Keep.”

Aranea and Ravus exchanged a look. Noctis raised an eyebrow—Ignis was definitely missing something here, but then again Ravus had mentioned that he had had Aranea look into Besithia’s whereabouts before. Maybe Noctis had overheard that exchange in the past.

Gladio merely curled his hands into fists. “Well, fine, we can rule out one megalomaniac making more Daemons. That doesn’t make this any less dire!”

Loqi had been chewing on his nails since they had entered the room, and he dropped his hand at last. “I… don’t think it’s that dire unless we mount an aerial assault on Insomnia any time soon. With all due respect, he had a point when he said that he didn’t have all intel. None of us do. There’s no people who worked with Besithia in Lestallum. Yet there’s a bunch of us that were involved with cleaning up these creatures before. Well, just the predecessors. He wasn’t one of these people. Anyway, once a glaring issue presented in artificially created Daemons, it stuck. The Diamond Weapons that the empire—no, the Diamond Weapon project that _we_ unleashed upon your city was uncontrollable and had a glaring weak point. Every single prototype shared that weak point; and yes, so did the ones that attacked the city that were considered the ultimate conclusion of that research. Ultimate or no, the weak point didn’t stop the Old Wall from punching quite a few of them out.”

The Lucians all exchanged a confused and terrified look. The Old Wall was more of a legend than anything else at this point; Ignis knew who had commanded it and at what price, but none of the others present did.

“Aerial types are fast when wound up, yes. You heard us having to deal with them. But they can’t land properly after taking flight. Get them too close to the ground and you can break their wings, leaving them wide open. Go too high and they cannot follow you; they weren’t made for high altitude. We used the latter to escape—the former we used to hunt escapees. Get above them, blind them, throw heavy nets on them, kill them while they’re helpless on the ground. I’m fairly sure we could devise similar tactics if they came to attack Lestallum.”

Ignis was starting to understand how that bratty noble had worked his way up in the army. Noble status or not, that was an impressive tactical mind—which made his fruitless attacks on Cor rather funny in hindsight. Brilliant but very much swayed by his emotions.

Kind of like himself.

Gladio at least conceded defeat by throwing his hands up in the air. “Alright. We continue playing Adamantoise in its shell. I’ll run a resource check and will come back to you. Any other confessions while we’re at it, Fleuret, Scientia, Highwind, Tummelt? Hell, why single them out. Amicitia, Argentum, Lucis Caelum?”

Iris muttered something about wanting to kick his ass. Aranea crossed her arms.

“Got the ring, can’t put it on, Draconian’s trying to lure me to the Crystal, had my ancestor threaten to kill me for getting too close.”

“I have to thank the Ring of the Lucii and my own stupidity and hubris for this prosthetic arm.”

“I was the one who had the Ring of the Lucii in the first place and I did consider putting it on before I bent my knee to Ardyn to buy more time.”

“I knew what Caligo Ulldor was planning on doing in Lestallum but I couldn’t stop him because when he made his move doctors were still fighting for my life.”

“What the _hell,_ guys? Suddenly I don’t feel bad about not being born in Lucis.”

Ignis opened his mouth and closed it again when he caught the glare Ravus shot him.

So Ravus knew about the MT project and the fact that Prompto was a clone of Verstael Besithia. Prompto on the other hand didn’t know—and neither did anyone else other than Ardyn and any hypothetical surviving members of Besithia’s group. And it seemed like Ravus was going to keep that one in particular a secret.

* * *

“I think I get it, yeah,” Noctis said and dodged the swipe. “Lot of it’s going over my head as usual, but the basic gist? Yep. Just afraid I can’t help you with learning how to use it. Elemancy. You know the drill.”

He parried Noctis’ attack and the two of them lowered their weapons.

“Well, at least we’re all making progress. Just gotta learn everything and then figure out how we can work together?”

Could they even work together? Many users of Elemancy already clashed wildly on the battlefield. Crowe Altius had worked well enough together with fast warpers like Nyx Ulric who could get out of the range of her spells fast enough while keeping her safe from enemies, yes, but anyone else did not mesh well with a brutal spellcaster type. Plain footsoldiers like Cor could not escape the reach of magic fast enough to escape unscathed; spellblades like Ignis himself suffered from an inability to warp; fast casters meant there was no one covering them.

How on good earth were he, Ravus and Noctis supposed to work together?

Then again, they hadn’t really learned the full extend of their powers. If Noctis’ story was to be believed—Ignis did not put a lot of trust into Somnus Lucis Caelum’s words, truth be told—and if the voices inside Pitioss had spoken the truth while Shiva hadn’t lied despite her track record, then there was something they all needed to learn before they could work out a proper way to defeat Ardyn. Whatever that was.

“I suppose. You will have to defeat six of your ancestors in fair combat. That’s… easier than learning an entire branch of magic by yourself or figuring out what exactly divides Oracle magic from Healer magic. Ravus supposes it’s the light aspect.”

“You don’t sound so convinced.”

Ignis crossed his arms with a huff. “Isn’t light the opposing power of darkness? That’s got nothing to do with Ardyn’s healing.”

Noctis shrugged and dropped the training weapon on the ground. “I mean you can point it out, but chance is he won’t listen. He’s surprisingly stubborn.”

“ _Thick-headed, more like,”_ Lunafreya chimed in softly.

Ignis was going to answer that, but Noctis hunched over with a groan.

“Noct?”

“One.” Sudden, inexplicable pain that would pass—surely enough, after a moment Noctis stood back up straight. He still had his teeth clenched, however, and Ignis started to frown. Before he could ask if Noctis really was fine, however, Noctis crossed his arms. “Hey, Ignis?”

“Yes?”

“Thanks for, y’know.” He uncrossed his arms and swiped the training weapon off the ground again. “Taking my words to heart.”

If Ignis died at the end, he wouldn’t complain about the lot. But Noctis had had a point, a very important point. He’d only realised after watching the Niffs and hearing the voice of Ardyn’s former teacher in the ruins—he would have to live with that lot. If retribution came for him, he would welcome it with open arms. But not before he made certain that Noctis lived.

He nodded. “You had a point, Your Majesty.”

Noctis laughed, and Ignis smiled at him. For the time being, he would do what everyone else in Lestallum did.

Bide his time. It was all they could do until the three of them figured out how exactly to take care of Ardyn with their powers combined. But at least they knew that they could succeed now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> turns out that the placeholder in my notes i would have had to name for this chapter could be replaced with aera. can't get rid of the oracle ancestor i made up for tu fui verse, but doesn't have to mean aera doesn't exist.
> 
> mistakes into miracles. or uh, deliberately left open for interpretation in verse 1 into character revealed as canon expanded while filling a slot i needed filled in verse 2


	53. VERSE 2 - in the pages of history

“I’m really sorry! I just… I can’t figure it out!”

Noctis laughed—not because he wanted to, but this was strangely endearing. “Don’t worry, Talcott. I really only came to ask you ‘cause you know so much about history. Figured you might know; not knowing’s fine too.”

There were quite a few people he had asked in the last two months, but even the best historians of Eos that had made their way to Lestallum had not entirely understood what he had asked about.

After all, who but the King of Lucis was the true well of knowledge when it came to the Lucis Caelum bloodline?

He was starting to understand why Ignis had been so mad. At first he had suspected the replacement king in general—Ignis hated being replaced or being a replacement—but slowly and steadily more and more came to light as Ignis opened up more and Noctis in turn opened up more as well. Ignis had been angry about being left out of the loop. The flow of relevant information had been cut in deliberate places, from books removed from the libraries inside the Citadel and the selfsame books put on demand only in the other libraries in Insomnia to a complete removal of certain things. It mostly concerned the prophecy, but as Noctis was starting to learn now it also concerned a good chunk of his own heritage.

Some past kings and queens eluded him completely. Out of 114, the only ones that he knew more than just what history taught about were the most prominent ones like the Founder King, the ones whose weapons were still known these days. He had nearly gone mad trying to find something on the Tranquil other than his name, but Fotis Lucis Caelum remained obscure to the highest degree because he did neither found the kingdom nor did he conquer a good chunk of territory like his father and his son did. After that he went through every single history buff and historian in Lucis and attempted to wring information out of them only for them to look at him as if he had gone mad.

Which led him to Talcott Hester.

Out of all people in Lestallum he would have expected Talcott to be the last to even _look_ at a Niff—or anyone involved with the Niflheim army for that matter. Yet somehow despite all of that, Talcott had been one of the people most openly happy to have Aranea’s mercenaries around even long before others accepted them. Much like how Cor and Loqi burying their hatchet and coming to a begrudging truce and hesitant respect for one another had been important for the peace in Lestallum, Talcott’s heartfelt declaration of putting his trust in Noctis’ judgement despite everything that had happened had won a lot of people over.

He admitted he didn’t like them much at some point, but Talcott nevertheless accepted their presence. Even if looking at newcomers donning army-issued armour made him run away as fast as he could.

Ravus admitted he had enjoyed running Caligo Ulldor through in the first place, but having heard the kid’s story made him regret that he hadn’t taken just a bit longer and made the villain suffer for longer. There definitely was something that Ravus kept to himself judging from the furious glare in his eyes, but knowing that Ulldor wouldn’t be coming back had definitely soothed some strained nerves in the city.

Talcott on the other hand did seemingly not pay much attention to that—it was obvious that he also kept something to himself, but Noctis was not going to pry. And the kid had a knack for befriending just the right people to get information.

This time around seemed to be the exception.

“I mean, yeah, it’s fine! But it _bothers_ me. Someone’s gotta know! But _who?”_

Noctis snorted. “All things considered, it should be me. But I don’t.”

Ignis harboured his fury, sharpened it like a weapon. He was absolutely mad about having been cut off from some very important streams of information all his life even now.

Noctis on the other hand was never sure whether he should laugh or cry every time something new came up. He definitely did not know a damned thing about his own family tree. He barely even knew things about his own mother and grandparents, let alone most people in his bloodline that the general public didn’t know. Cor had died with a treasure trove of stories about King Regis when he was younger and King Mors in the final years of his rule; King Regis had died with all stories about his own bloodline. And King Noctis was left standing not entirely sure how to proceed.

He just wanted to figure out which ones would be the best to tackle. He would have loved fighting the Fierce and the Rogue but they remained out of his reach. Not knowing much about the others made it hard to choose one, let alone five others before he could cross swords with the Mystic.

“Still, I wanna help you, but I think I need some more time to figure these things out….” Talcott pouted. “But wouldn’t approaching people with the blessing first be a better idea? I can try digging things out in the meanwhile, Your Majesty.”

What if these other Kings and Queens of Yore were like the Mystic? That was what worried Noctis.

He nodded either way, mumbled that he would consider it.

* * *

Ignis still avoided large groups and generally was not found roaming the streets—but at least his newfound powers meant that he approached others to try figuring them out during magic training sessions. The thing he figured out the fastest was the fact that he could conjure up wisps that behaved like real fire but lacked the elemental properties. It looked like fire but did not feel like it, it completely lacked the heat properties and might as well just have been a projection. Which, everyone figured, was the point of illusions.

The advisor furrowed his brows at that statement, something that only Iris noticed at the time.

Everyone had their stories they didn’t tell, and Noctis started to realise that Ignis had quite a lot of things he avoided or never mentioned in any way. Noctis noticed how sometimes he flinched away from people summoning weapons despite the fact he had grown up around the Citadel and that he had had the ability to conjure weapons up like this once upon a time as well. He seemed oddly fidgety during training sessions especially when he was disarmed. He had even gone as far as hurriedly excusing himself and all but fleeing the place when Libertus had gone and shown off why most people considered the man the leader of the remaining Glaives.

Insomnia and what had happened to cause all these scars on him remained a mystery—Noctis had overheard a Glaive saying that once they saw a scar on his shoulder that had a perfect counterpart on his back that looked as if he had been stabbed through it. He wasn’t going to push Ignis, not while he was sitting there with his eyes squeezed shut and trying to mess with the flames that seemed to dance around him.

Noctis reached out for one of them. He knew that they didn’t hurt; they barely did anything. His fingers went through the flames completely unharmed, and Ignis shuddered.

“Please don’t touch them,” he breathed out and the illusion around Noctis’ fingers flickered.

He quickly removed his hand and looked at Ignis. “You can feel that?”

“Only when I focus on them. Which I am doing. Please refrain from touching these again.”

Noctis shrugged. “Fake fire that seems real enough to trick people. Pretty sure those things existed once—swamp lights, I think?”

Ignis cracked one eye open and smiled wryly. “I’m afraid that I am merely _Ignis Scientia_ and not _Ignis fatuus,_ Your Majesty. But yes. Iris has pointed out the same.”

“Which is why you want to make it real fire.”

He dropped the smile and opened his eyes. That was an unexpected shift in mood even for Ignis, since he dismissed the illusory flames immediately and stared into the distance. “I know it’s possible. But… maybe my, uh, dabbling in… _other arts_ has ruined my chance at getting to that level.” That was… a dire expression on his face. Something that Noctis had only seen once before in his life, and it terrified him—it had been back when they had returned to Lestallum and found out that while they had been gone Jared had been all but executed in public.

“Ignis?”

He folded his hands. “It’s silly, it truly is. But I know for a fact that you can recreate real flames with illusions. I have been on the—I mean. I saw it, back in Insomnia.”

There it was again, that strange forlorn look he got every time he thought about Insomnia. The same underlying fear that hit him whenever a training session got too rough.

Hells, Ignis was trembling slightly.

Noctis bit his lower lip before putting a hand on Ignis’ shoulder. Seeing him cringe as he did hurt, but he kept his hand on his former advisor’s shoulder. “And you’ll do it. You just need time—how about you focus on something else for the time being and let the fire be an issue later on?”

Ignis trembled, but Noctis realised that he was laughing very softly. It was that same laugh that had haunted him for hours back when they had both been teenagers whose only concern was school and eventual succession to the throne. That soft laugh that Ignis only seemed to laugh around Noctis.

“Isn’t that what your father told you when you struggled to grasp the concept of the other elements?”

“And the thing you told me when I struggled with wind magic. Yeah, yeah. C’mon Ignis, you’re the magical genius here, not me. If anyone can figure this out, it’s you, but you’re not going to move forward if you keep on beating a dead Chocobo with a stick until it tells you how to use fire again.”

Ignis replied nothing, but laughed. Loudly.

That had to be the first time in ages that Noctis heard that laugh, and he cursed himself for still feeling his heart beat faster because of that.

* * *

Perhaps it would be wisest to start with someone he knew enough about rather than relying on scraps of information that Talcott managed to hoover up somehow. There was the fact that the Founder King had said that he would have to challenge their chosen warriors _and_ the Lucii meant that perhaps we was limited to the ones that were well-known in Lestallum. There were a few cases of people clearly displaying some sort of blessing but it seemed weaker than the usual suspects. He had spent some time around the Chocobos in the last two weeks and had started to realise that something about one of the girls from Wiz’ Chocobo Post had changed somehow. He wasn’t entirely certain what to make of Maris—she had already been a good fighter before all of this, having been the daughter of two hunters, but lately she had turned into a formidable opponent.

As if her usual silence hid solid steel nowadays.

Noctis had wanted to ponder on this for a while, but he was interrupted by Prompto ripping the door open without even knocking. Normally Noctis would have yelled something about knocking, said something about what if he hadn’t been dressed, but Prompto did not give him a chance to do so.

“Dude! Man, get off the fucking chair, you _have_ to see this shit Ignis just pulled!”

Rather than waiting, Prompto lunged forward, grabbed Noctis by the arm, yanked him out of the chair and started dragging him. Hell, they were all but running through the streets, and Noctis dimly realised that he was being pulled towards the main training grounds. For a second fear surged through him—today was a magic training day.

Surely enough, there was a commotion on the training grounds. He half expected to find a Daemon, find a pile of bloody corpses and Ignis standing in the middle of them.

Training weapons were lying around; most of the Glaives training here on this day used weapons to focus their magical powers into a blast. Ignis had assumed that perhaps he still needed daggers to do so.

He’d expected carnage.

What he found was a baffled crowd that was very loudly discussing what had just happened, with an equally baffled Ignis blinking at Ravus.

Ravus was floating about half a metre off the ground.

_Floating._

According to Prompto this had happened less than five minutes ago, and no one had an explanation for it. All they knew was that Ignis had sighed loudly and thrown his daggers away claiming that all this was doing was making his headache worse and that maybe he ought to focus on the most outlandish thing he could be thinking of. Prompto, while still not trusting Ignis further than he could throw him, had joked that maybe the most outlandish thing was to make the Oracle fly so he could get around Lestallum faster. Everyone present had laughed, and Ignis had said that he might as well.

A split moment later Ravus had been floating.

The Oracle had also not said a thing or moved the slightest since this had happened according to the Glaives present.

Ignis meanwhile was white as a sheet as he finally turned to Ravus. “I….”

Ravus finally moved. He folded his hands and sat down—still floating, of course. It looked so strange to see the man sit on thin air.

Then he broke into roaring laughter. “Well! I think we could use that to our advantage if you’re able to replicate that, Ignis.”

The baffled murmuring changed into excited chatter. Noctis and Prompto crossed their arms when Ignis looked into their direction, but Noctis made sure to shoot him an encouraging smile on top of that.

* * *

For quite a while it felt like everything was going right in Lestallum. While many people were still unhappy with Ignis being around they at least started tolerating him again—Prompto especially, but once Noctis had caught that familiar grin that Gladio and Ignis usually exchanged when they were on good terms with each other. There were discussions of maybe trying to take back Insomnia bit by bit especially now that they had someone who knew his way around the hellscape that was the Crown City in the dark. Ignis dashed any excited hopes for it and said that there were simply too many Daemons around and the flying ones presented a problem; many paths through the city would have relied on jumping from roof to roof or finding a network of non-collapsed subway tunnels. But still, there was an excited buzz in Lestallum now that had not been present beforehand. Excited enough that they had sent a group of people to Hammerhead to reinforce the power lines there.

Everything had been going right.

And then everything went so wrong.

They lost Hammerhead and twenty-three people of the thirty they had sent there. Gladio got off the airship that returned battered and bruised, with Ravus slung over one of his shoulders. If it hadn’t been for Ravus weakly kicking his foot into Gladio’s stomach Noctis would have presumed the Oracle dead. Aranea followed with Cindy and Cid, and then the four other Glaives that had survived the ordeal stumbled off the airship.

Not even twenty minutes later they had met for a sort of emergency meeting, with none of the returners even having bothered getting themselves cleaned up. It didn’t look that bad with Gladio, but the two Niffs and their light hair made it obvious how much blood had really been spilled there. Noctis’ heart hammered in his throat as they started the status report of what had happened—an ambush that had directly targeted the power lines. It had been too organised to really have been just the Daemons acting on their own, but despite all that they had not found the Chancellor of Niflheim anywhere nearby.

He was more focused on the fact that Ravus looked positively feverish and refused to move his prosthetic arm. Aranea caught his look and hurriedly explained that Ravus had blocked an Iron Giant’s swipe from killing the injured Cid and then had spent the entire flight back trying to heal one of the worst wounds she had ever seen. They’d lost that Glaive and Ravus had keeled over not long before they touched down; Gladio suspected that Ravus was experiencing a harsh stasis, if Oracles could go into it.

When the meeting was dismissed and Noctis said that he would be going to check up on the Glaives, Cid and Cindy as soon as he digested this news, Ravus remained in his chair. Only when Noctis said that he was leaving did the man finally move and raised his remaining arm slowly.

“Your training. It has been going well, hasn’t it?”

Noctis shrugged at the man. He was still not entirely certain how to proceed, but he had focused on honing his skills just in case he finally figured out which ones of his ancestors made a better choice to fight. Somehow he felt like picking out the ones that weren’t strictly fighters would only gain him the ire of these people, and Noctis had a feeling he really needed them and their support.

“You said the final one would be the Mystic. Did he say you had to win against them, or win against them in quick succession?”

“He… he only said I needed to win.”

Ravus leaned backwards in his chair and closed his eyes. There was a small smile on his face as he moved his prosthetic arm a little, even if it looked like it should have hurt quite a lot. That thing was still Niff technology melded into his own skin. “In that case, you could take years to win against them and still get their support. But rather than waiting years, I have a proposal.”

His bangs were completely encrusted in dried blood, but Ravus still brushed them out of his face slowly. His face was still flushed feverishly and his eyes seemed strangely unfocused—that was definitely a stasis-like trance he was in, but his voice was surprisingly clear when he continued.

“Make me your first opponent. Or rather, the Oracle King.”

“Eh?”

“Show me your conviction. I once considered myself more worthy and was put in my place. Now show me that I was truly wrong,” Ravus said surprisingly softly as he put his hand on the metal arm.

Noctis watched with no small amount of horror as he undid whatever connected it to his shoulder. It dropped to the floor with a horribly loud clanking noise, and Ravus let out a soft hiss as he put his hand on that shoulder. He had his jaw clenched and his eyes were closed when a soft glow started emanating from his hand. “Show me that you can do better. No, show me and the Oracle King that you can do better than we both did.”

* * *

“So that’s how they met in Terrecephe and set out for the Vesperpool together? But what’s Hepplecamp then; isn’t that much closer?”

Talcott crossed his arms with a hum. “Hepplecamp was… well, it was a hillside camp close to the Myrlwoods, so it’s safe to assume that the Oracle King picked up the Star of the Rogue much like you did before they crossed to where the village Lix once stood. You’re probably mixing up Hepplecamp and Terrecephe because some people say that the moment the King and the Oracle met the stood before his troops hand in hand and delivered that address.”

Noctis shook his head slightly.

“But,” Talcott continued, playing with his pen, “it was about a month of marching between Terrecephe and Hepplecamp. They stopped in settlements on the way so Paraskeve Spes Fleuret could do her duty as the Oracle. Most history lessons apparently skim the fact that they travelled together for quite a while. Not as long as the Mystic and Oracle Diantha, mind, but they were on the road together long enough for them to fall in love—which in turn led to the hand-in-hand address at Hepplecamp a week before disaster struck and Oracle Paraskeve was killed.”

“Gah… honestly, you knowing all that is impressive, Talcott.”

The kid beamed at him from where he was sitting. “Took me a while to piece it all together.”

Knowing the enemy was half the battle, Noctis presumed—and had gone to ask Talcott for help with the Oracle King. He had had a dim feeling that he knew something about the man that others didn’t, but he still had to check whether his gut instinct had been right or not. And indeed, the more Talcott told him, the more certain Noctis became that the Oracle King was the selfsame one who had called himself a coward on the warnings left for the eventual generation that could take care of what he sealed below Steyliff Grove.

The stories on the monoliths and the story that Talcott was retelling fit together perfectly. But as Talcott continued, Noctis started to realise there was one glaring difference in them.

“He defeated the creature in the end with those who remained and those who took up their arms to aid him.”

Noctis knew better, of course. The menaces that lurked beneath Lucis were a story he and the other three had agreed to never tell anyone about. It had been a gruelling experience to begin with, travelling through these sealed cages for whatever kings and queens and Oracles of the past could not banish themselves. Steyliff Grove had stood out as one of the most terrifying dungeons they had encountered; bleak and seemingly endless, carved all the way into what remained of a temple’s deeper parts. Gladio had eventually noted that perhaps this had been where the priests and priestesses of that temple had lived. Beneath the temple grounds; and eventually they had gotten to where they were buried. And at the very bottom of that, the creature that had killed Oracle Paraskeve, the creature that the Oracle King had so desperately fought only to realise that he could not bring it down. It had been a brutal fight, one that had left them all gasping for breath on the ground after they finally brought the thing down.

Still, he was not going to tell Talcott any of this. Thus he crossed his arms. “So he’s probably a formidable fighter with that trident.”

“Yep! Well, I guess.”

Honestly, going up against two people at the same time while he was on his own seemed slightly unfair, but Noctis figured that was part of the test. Elpidius Lucis Caelum and Ravus Nox Fleuret were going to be a formidable first choice; but Noctis was starting to understand some things. How and why the Lucii chose their people, first of all. The similarities between Elpidius and Ravus were glaring now that he thought about it. They had both loved an Oracle, they had both failed to protect her, they had both tried to fill her footsteps. As controlled as Ravus seemed these days, his dead sister still haunted him in everything he did, but especially after he was asked to help someone with the Scourge. Elpidius’ failure had persisted until the Chosen King had been born, likely bearing down on his shoulders until then.

Making up a strategy on how to take care of them both was… surprisingly hard despite all the information he had on the two of them. No records of whether Elpidius was adept at shielding or not survived; if he was as good as Regis had been then Noctis was in for trouble. Defence was precisely what Ravus was lacking, and therefore a weak point.

Ravus was fast and strong, but his glaring weak spot was the fact that he fought with reckless abandon and wasted no time on defending himself. He defended others when necessary, yes, but there was a healthy disrespect for his own life in play that absolutely could not be ignored. If the Oracle King was not outstanding at shielding, then that was exactly the thing Noctis would need to exploit.

Another thing that he was starting to realise was why the empire had been so obsessed with disabling his connecting to the Crystal. Even just the thought of having to face a warping opponent was making his blood run cold; he would have had to plan ahead for years to face someone like Ardyn on equal grounds. Mostly because there was no one else who could warp like a Lucian royal. The glaives were able to do it in short bursts, yes, but Noctis was a master of long distance warping. Something that not even his father had been that good at. It was safe to assume that someone as ancient as Ardyn either had been able to long distance warp or had learned it over the years.

Even if he wasn’t warping in the end and just abusing mirages.

Noctis rubbed his temples. “You sure there’s nothing on how he fought?”

“If there ever were any records, then they’re either in a royal library back in Insomnia or have been lost… at least, that’s what I figured out after talking to a couple historians.”

So either they did no longer exist or they were in the one place that he absolutely could not get to. Noctis had humoured the thought of sneaking into Insomnia to get some things out of it before, but he had quickly realised that it would have been hypocritical to do so after he had chewed Ignis out for sneaking out of Lestallum.

This was all going to be a stab in the dark. Or rather, a shot against an ancestor he knew just enough about to feel for him but also not enough to be sure that he could defeat him.

Surprisingly enough, Noctis felt ready for it despite all the variables that he couldn’t figure out.

* * *

He still remembered the first time they had met back in Tenebrae. It had been barely more than a short introduction, with Noctis too intimidated to say anything and Ravus trying to perfectly play the role of successor to the throne welcoming foreign royalty. Noctis knew that this was the kind of prince everyone expected out of him even at his age, and he had been scared of never living up to that ideal. Ravus and Ignis, though years apart, were rather similar. Hindsight made it clear why they were so similar, with their stoically calm expressions even at that young age, with their perfect posture and perfectly calm voice no matter the circumstance.

A prince that Ravus wasn’t normally according to Luna. She had laughed gently and clapped her hands together when Noctis had said that her brother intimidated him. Then she had told him how it had been Ravus who had taught her how to make flower crowns; a picture that absolutely did not fit together with the teenager with the steely gaze and cold expression. He only saw Ravus not be a perfect model prince once—when Luna danced around the flower field, with Noctis sitting in his wheelchair, and Ravus chasing after her. When he caught her and hugged her close to him, he’d laughed with her.

The next time he dropped the stoic calm had been when fire had engulfed everything, when blood had been splattered on his face and a deep cut torn off the sleeve of his shirt with blood lazily oozing from it. That look of utter agony as he called for Noctis’ father to _help them._

This time it felt like meeting him again, but on more equal ground this time. Noctis might have woken up with a dull throbbing pain in his back reminding him that despite everything he was still the same person, but this time around he and Ravus might as well have been the kings of their countries this time around. Lucis and Tenebrae were allies, had always been allies—would always be allies; even if for a while it had looked like their friendship might fall apart.

Rather than Prince Noctis and Prince Ravus meeting as a traumatised child and an almost coddled teenager they were both here as remnants of their bloodlines. They were on the same side again, and this time with quite a lot at stake.

They both nodded at each other. This part of Lestallum was deliberately empty; with just enough space to encourage warping around if the need arose. It were the Glaive training grounds—empty for the first time since Lestallum had become the major city in Lucis under the veil of eternal night.

Noctis quietly summoned his sword to his side, whereas Ravus raised the Trident of the Oracle that he was carrying. For a moment he looked at it—and then confidently chucked it away.

Just as he did that the atmosphere of the place shifted, and a moment later a man much smaller than the Tenebrae stood beside him. Noctis wondered whether Ravus saw him armour-clad or not in this very moment, but the man carrying a glimmering copy of the trident that Ravus had just discarded shot Noctis a warm smile. The Oracle King turned out to look nothing like he had imagined him to look like. Much like the Tranquil he had short dark brown hair framing his face, but there was a sparkle in that spectre’s eyes that the Tranquil had lacked. It definitely had been absent from the Mystic as well.

“You… both know the terms?”

It had taken a while for them to come to an agreement. Noctis had even asked if they were even allowed to choose the rules when the Mystic was around and refusing to answer their calls—refusing even Libertus’ calls despite his power clearly still answering his chosen. Eventually Ravus had clasped his hands together and said that perhaps they simply ought to choose and let that man suffer the consequences, because the ruleset would be applied to the other battles as well.

Elpidius moved his ghostly crystalline trident slightly and nodded. “The conditions for your loss, Chosen, are being disabled and disarmed and unable to continue the fight or fleeing. The conditions for our loss, ancestor and selected warrior, is that in the event of either being disarmed or disabled we lose even if the other can continue the fight.”

Noctis closed his eyes for a moment, then smiled at the two of them. “Alright. Any last minute withdrawals, complaints, suggestions?”

His ancestor looked slightly baffled by that statement, and Ravus only rolled his eyes. “None.”

“Well, then on three.” They both nodded at him. “One. Two.”

Ravus unsheathed Alba Leonis. His last tie to the empire as its former High Commander, a sword he still carried with pride despite everything else. A testament to his own tenacity, perhaps—at least Aranea had called it that. It was the same reason why some other Niffs still carried their old empire-made weapons around. It was why Loqi still bore his family’s banner, it was why Aranea herself had started teaching Glaives Niff moves.

That country had done a lot of wrong, but all these people knew it. They were proud of what they themselves had achieved, they were still calling themselves Niffs rather than anything else. All complicit, all atoning.

“Three.”

He had considered waiting until they made the first move, but Ravus had not become the High Commander for looking pretty and Elpidius for all his shortcomings had still managed to at least seal the beast in the lowest reaches of Steyliff Grove. Waiting for them to make the first move would give them an advantage; and Noctis had a plan.

Rather than warping straight into them like he would have had before darkness had fallen, he instead used his ability to warp long distance to his advantage. There was a small spot behind them, and before he gave them a chance to figure out where exactly he had gone, he tossed a flask at them.

It was a diluted spell, of course, but seeing all this frost bloom around Ravus and the ghostly ancestor still made Noctis grin. He might not be able to be called a spellslinger, he was nowhere near as strong as his father had been, but the fact that he was good with magic flasks remained. It also made the ground slippery—something that Noctis definitely could use to his advantage. Ravus might be used to it since it snowed in Tenebrae, but his dead ancestor had deliberately implemented the rule that he could not use the fact that he was a ghost to float about. If Elpidius was someone who wasn’t good at or used to using ice-aligned magic, then that was an advantage for Noctis.

He knew his family had an affinity for fire. It was something that he didn’t question at all—but in return ice magic was often considered one of the hardest things to learn even amongst the Glaives. Apparently only Crowe Altius had managed to reach the same level as King Regis when it came to ice, and Noctis still played in a much worse league than the dead Glaive and his dead father. He was completely banking on an assumption.

Surely enough, Ravus seemed unbothered. The Oracle King on the other hand looked at his feet.

Noctis cracked a smile and warped back in, this time making sure to collide with his ancestor. Despite the fact that he was clearly not used to ice, the man proved surprisingly hard to topple even with the velocity of a warp behind it. Noctis phased out of a swing of the trident just in the nick of time and barely managed to dodge Ravus trying to grab his arm.

For all intents and purposes, he needed to get on even footing with them. The frost slowly melted as he continued dodging their swipes; it was gone by the time Ravus narrowly avoided getting a sword to the face when Noctis pulled it from the Armiger and chucked it into his direction.

It soon turned into a dance between the three of them. Noctis was looking for an opening, but those two absolutely refused to budge or show a weakness. Noctis on the other hand made certain to not overdo the phasing—he had built up a lot of magical stamina to the point that he nearly did not feel the strain of phasing a lot, but if this was going to be a drawn-out fight then he needed his reserves.

Then Ravus stopped dead after he missed a swipe. There was a grin on his face, and it took Noctis a second to parse what was going on.

The Oracle was trying to light him up, quite literally.

He could easily warp past it, but something kept him standing still. There was exactly one sort of magic that he had not mastered yet that his family was known for. He could call upon the Hexatheon that he had a covenant with, but the one thing that absolutely and completely eluded him was how to raise a magical shield like his father had been able to. He hadn’t learned how to raise the Wall because it had strictly speaking not been necessary—his father had always said that unless something went truly wrong then he would not have to learn it until he turned 21.

Glaives were able to create shining barriers that lasted for a short while or until enough damage was done to them; Noctis on the other hand was supposed to be able to raise these indefinitely as long as he had the stamina to.

He raised both his hands in the same moment that Ravus sent a bolt of light into his direction. Something in his veins ran cold—if he messed this up he would likely lose, all things considered.

Noctis opened his eyes immediately when he heard glass shattering.

“Huh,” Ravus said and took a step further away.

Elpidius grinned. “Very good, Chosen.”

A thin blue shield had built up around him, something that he had never been able to do back in Insomnia no matter how many times he tried it with only Ignis around.


End file.
